Candy Boy
by White Silver and Mercury
Summary: Riku/Sora — MATURE — His life was a grimy rut on the road of existence. Riku found no purpose to its endless ennui—until he began to spend time with a scarred brunet boy who had an unusual addiction to red candy. ...But Candy Boy also had some secrets.
1. Chance

_**Candy Boy**_

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the amazing franchise © Disney and Square Enix; everything else © their rightful owners. **

**Ratings/Warnings: M—profanity, graphic themes, AU**

**A/N: So here I am, finding myself using the redundant cliché of high school AU. I agree that the setting of high school AU is incredibly overused, but I had to succumb to it for the sake of the story. Some people can pull it off while some people butcher it. I hope I do the former. **

**I promise that there's more to this than a story of high school students, so please bear with me. :D **

* * *

_Chapter One_

* * *

Riku knew it was a black day when he garnished his slim, tan wrist with a checkered wristband, and a blue day when he was all nervous grins and flinches.

But he didn't automatically know the difference between abysmal azure and smoldering obsidian. That intimate knowledge came later, after a stumbling start and a rocky path, the one less traveled by that made all the difference in the end. A short but oh-so long while later.

A chance encounter can impact a life forevermore—but let's backtrack to the beginning, to the origin of it all, to the days when he could easily define who he was talking to because the two were not wrestling for his attention, something he never before imagined he'd have to handle.

Back up, retrace, retreat to the beginning, when there was not even one pair of two—there were just two ones, and singular, lonesome ones they were. And the boy with the silver hair was very much so aware of this, as was the brunet with the bag of Swedish Fish clutched tightly in his fist.

* * *

It was raining again. No, it was fucking pouring. It was raining _cats and dogs_, and they were thunking on the roof like there was no tomorrow, thudding and pounding and ripping across the thin shelter of his house.

But they weren't really animals—it was just torrential precipitation, pattering down on the coastal city, relentless. He was lying on his back with a palm gently cradling his neck, staring up at the ceiling as its exterior was assailed by water, with sea-green eyes at half-mast; he otherwise was entirely blasé, as if bored with the world around him and thus retreating to the sanctity of his bedroom to busy himself with his own thoughts. Things such as the English paper he still, as of yet, needed to write, how beat he was because of soccer practice today, that dinner had really sucked because it wasn't Saturday for a few more days which meant the shopping list was still being built, how he was thoroughly enraged because the dryer was acting up again, he'd hurt his wrist when he'd angrily assaulted it via his frustrated fists, and now wet clothing was draped in every possible spot throughout the house, drying and filling it up with the cloying stench of wet cotton and fabric soap, and oh, look, now it was eight forty-five at night and he was just lying here on his bed, gawking up at the blank ceiling with an equally blank face.

His dad had demanded that the dryer be repaired by Friday evening, or else. "Or else" had become the old guy's favorite words over the past few years, ever since Riku had reached an age capable of housework and other such labors, free and completely legal; the "or else" stupidly chased the tails of his sentences like an attention deficit dog's mouth, run together into one word. It was a subtle threat that was never solidified, never given a reason to be feared—and yet somehow, it was just abhorrent enough to hear that it was successful.

Until then, Riku opted to use the Laundromat. He didn't think he could last two more nights with sopping clothes hanging on the chair-backs and doorknobs. He'd already loathed the smell of damp laundry, and of course God thus, most likely, found it captivatingly hilarious to poke the rickety contraption of a dryer with one holy finger and watch it utterly go kaput.

Thunder rolled overhead, probably God's guttural hysteria at Riku's growling dismay, and his dim room lit up with the flash of lightning and then again, thunder. He rolled limply onto his side, one arm still tucked beneath his head, the other flopping idly upon his stomach. His thighs were already beginning to ache and pulse, agonized by the intense routines the soccer team had endured after school. Run, run, run, strategize, strategize, strategize, rush, rush, rush, _pass, pass, pass, kick, kick, kick_. Cardio, strength, tactics. Get a drink of water and begin again. He was the only one who didn't drink Gatorade; they teased him gingerly, but shut up at his scalding glance, and knew that water was really better than Gatorade anyway. And he'd snicker at that.

Through the thin walls, he heard his parents' bedroom being shut off from the hall, the slam of the door voluble perhaps not _only_ because the architecture of the house was weak. His uninterested eyes locked onto the wall, his lips twitched in disgust, and the elbow draped over his hip shifted as his fingertips clenched into his cool gray sheets. Were they starting up already? God, it was only...nine o'clock?

It was easy to ignore the muffled whispers and voices, because they were incoherent and never anything else. _Almost _inaudible but not, just _not, _quite there yet. But it was always the bedsprings creaking, the repetitive brush-brush of the mattress onto the dead plaster of the wall, that made him cringe at the rancidness, alone in his room. It was those unbearable noises, the weary and the predatory, that made him stumble to the bathroom because just a few times he seriously thought he was going to be sick.

Though, that only happened on those nights when he was old enough, brave enough, to imagine the scene that played out in his parents' dark bedroom.

For years, it was simply defend your conscience with other things, and the proverbial routine began once more this night. _Block it out, block it out, think things that should _normally _concern a fifteen-year-old. School, sports, chores, driver's-ed in the spring and after that a summer job. Things that should _not_ concern you are the things that go on between your pathetic mother and your ugly father. That is their own shitty business, business that _does not concern you_. How are you going to manage to fix that goddamn dryer, hunh, Riku? Get Tidus to come over and do it? You never were a mechanic._

It was nearly two hours later that the noises really ceased, and by that time, Riku had wrapped himself within a cocoon of crisp sheets, his face buried into the pillow normally slammed up to his wall. He'd wriggled out of his basketball shorts to completely settle in, comfortable in just a T-shirt and boxers; he let them fall, neglected, to the clean floor of his room, listening to the lifeless _fwump_ as they hit the carpet. Lashes lowered, Riku jabbed his nose further into the pillow, exhaling to try to soothe the annoying pinch in the middle of his chest. He was so tired, so sore, so worn out in every sense of the phrase but something, just _something_, was keeping him from finally clutching the silence and falling into its placidity with enthusiastic ease.

What did he have to wake up to tomorrow?

Anything besides a breakfast grabbed as he ran to school?

Anything that might draw a genuine smile out of him, a real drop of happiness?

And where the hell were _these _lousy thoughts coming from? Sprawled on his stomach, he was fine with the way things were—he was fine with the storm still prattling around outside his window, with the silence on the other side of the wall and throughout the house, with the fact that the dryer was broken and he had to fix it, with the exhausted muscles and the paper due next Wednesday he needed to start. That was all nothing but it was all still something.

_Once upon a time, there was a little house between the edge of the woods and the edge of the village. In this house lived a little boy and his mother and father. They loved him very much, and he loved them, too. He was a very good boy, always doing his chores and playing safely. One day, while his mother and father were out, he got bored. He was bored with everything and everyone around him because nothing ever changed and it was the same, same, same every day. So he disobeyed. He went to explore the forest that his daddy told him to never go in alone. There he found a beautiful clearing with a crystal-clear pond, and in this pond he examined his reflection. All of a sudden, his reflection started talking to him. He was frightened but it said: 'Don't be scared. Why are you out here?' _

_How did it talk, Mom?_

_It's magical, Riku. Don't you believe in magic?_

_Not really. That's all in books and movies. _

_The boy answered, 'Because I'm bored.' His reflection became very sad and then it said, 'How can you be bored? There is so much to see around you. You just aren't looking.' The little boy got offended and told his reflection, 'I DO look. Perhaps you're lying to me. What is there to find, anyway?' As his reflection started to ripple and fade away, it spoke one last time: 'You're bored because you don't know anything yet—but you'll learn. You'll learn that you have to look for the good things. They may be hard to find and you might want to give up, but there's always something good...' The boy was confused, but went about playing with sticks and pebbles and climbing trees. But his reflection's words troubled him. When he got back to his house... Riku? Riku, are you awake? ...I love you, honey._

A small part of him began to grow a very anxious fear.

Would he be alone like this forever?

They were loserish thoughts, stupid, stupid, ultimately _stupid_ thoughts, and Riku closed his eyes completely to force them away because that bleak gray wall gaping back at him was enough to make them return.

He was fine. Riku was fine with everything. He was fine with being the only son, the only one who did the household work, the one who cooked dinner while his mom sat in the hand-me-down recliner reading the latest paperback she'd bought at the grocery store, the one who obeyed every command his deadbeat father spewed as he kicked up his feet and turned on the tube; he was fine being on the honor lists at school, at being one of the top members on the soccer team, utterly and completely fine with being popular even though he didn't try to be, didn't want to be, and didn't even put forth efforts to maintain his state of being so.

But there was a small voice in him, perhaps the romantic that lives lonesomely within each individual's heart, and it whispered to him in fright that he was missing something.

Riku snorted, shrugged, and denied the voice. He turned to his side, and he fell asleep carelessly because he—really, honestly—didn't give, nor want to give, a flying fuck, shit, or rat's ass about being alone.

Maybe.

* * *

A wafting scent of chicken, potato wedges, and other classics filled the vast left wing of the building, blending together to create the oh-so familiar and oh-so loathed stench of school lunch. The cafeteria was crowded and noisy as always, even with nearly a quarter of the students milling about through the air-conditioned hallways or out on the grounds in the stead of settling down at a table. It was a mess hall of bored adolescents trying to cram vital socializing time into an irritatingly short twenty-five minutes of freedom—as well as cramming in food, whether it was the school's or their own.

Riku wasn't entirely sure of what it was that compelled him to sit down with the lone boy at the long lunch table.

It wasn't pity because he was eating by himself, and it wasn't charity because the brunet was eating food from the vending machines, but before he could comprehend exactly _why_, Riku was sliding onto the built-in bench of the white table, dropping his backpack near his ankles and setting his tray of food down before him. What he did not know was that it had been his conscience acting on a sudden spark of attraction, confusing thoughts that only filtered into the maelstrom of other confusing thoughts that filled his brain day in and day out, thoughts that ran together indifferently.

What Riku _did_ know when the brunet boy's head shot up in surprise, blinking at the unknown student across from him with a demanding frown, was that he was suddenly very, very glad that Wakka was absent today and Tidus had lunch detention—otherwise the silver-haired teen wouldn't have plopped down across from the isolated boy in the light blue T-shirt that made his dark blue eyes all the more mesmerizing. His mission had been to save himself the hassle of sitting with people he didn't want to sit by because they'd start talking to him, and something had magnetized him when he saw this student, just the one and only kid at the table, drawing him in with the safety of a vacant spot.

But this one looked talkative. He looked as though he were about to wet his pants in absolute joy that someone was sitting across from him, someone had _noticed _him, and he was going to start babbling away, pouring out his entire heart and soul to Riku, so maybe this wasn't the best of choices but he wasn't leaving because at least he could tell the kid to shut the fuck up and no one was sitting around them to chastise him for such a bitter indignation—

"Why are you sitting by me?"

Riku blinked, completely blindsided. "E-excuse me?" he spat back, furrowing down into an incredulous glower. The boy in the blue shirt had curdled from enthusiasm to utter introversion, hunching up and encircling his arms around his three bags of snacks and a Coke can, guarding them as though Riku were some type of humanoid vulture. The two eyed each other, silenced, one pair of deep blue eyes inquisitive and rightfully perplexed, and a pair of sea-green eyes startled and slightly put off.

"I asked, 'Why are you—'"

"I heard you. I was leaning more to why the fuck did you just say that?"

"Geez, _you're_ nice." Those perfect little lips skewed into an obstinate scowl that was still somehow entirely sad. Regarding Riku through his lashes rather moodily, he continued, "You'll never make friends with that attitude."

"I don't _want_ to make friends." It wasn't a lie; it was so painfully true that Riku's snarl had softened somewhat. He was notorious for his rudeness, his nonchalant words and seemingly lack of any care at all—it was simply saving people the trouble of being misinformed. When Riku didn't like someone, he let it be known. He didn't hide it. And yet so many students wouldn't leave him _alone_, obsessing and talking even when he asked them—kindly and then not so kindly—to stop. Was this loner kid the first to react _normally_ to him?

Intriguing.

_No, _not _intriguing. Not intriguing at all. I don't need any more friends. I can barely manage Wakka and Tidus bringing out the good in me, and I don't even try with them._

"If you don't _want_ to make friends, then why did you sit here? Usually, that's a big red flag that someone wants to be your friend. To me, at least."

Riku's jaw fell gently slack. The little brunet sitting across the table, absently digging out a pretzel from one of the bags in front of him and pressing it through those pink lips and onto a pinker tongue, was so quiet and seemed so coy, but he had such...such an _attitude_. Still entirely dubious that someone was playing the petulant sarcasm right back at him, and so smoothly at that, Riku closed his mouth and blinked a few times, trying to regain his composure.

"I had nowhere to sit." _Pathetic. Outright pathetic. Is it storming again, or is God laughing at you even more?_

"I bet you have plenty of friends to sit with."

"Not really my friends."

"Well, then people. You have plenty of _people_ to sit with. There's that boy with the funny headband who drinks protein shakes, the blond one who buys doughnuts a lot for lunch, the—"

"Are you a stalker or something?"

"No, I—I just notice. I...watch people a lot." Roughly, the brunet snatched for his Coke but took a contradictorily dainty sip, casting his gaze elsewhere as a cloud of some foreign emotion smudged his face. Riku picked up his plastic fork, not really directing it to an item of food in particular but instead letting it drift around his tray; a stab of guilt had suddenly clenched onto his chest, and he didn't like that. What was the hold this boy had about him? Riku wasn't going to let someone so simple knock him into a state of feeling disconnected. That was dumb.

"Well, if you must know," Riku murmured, settling his gaze on his food now and realizing he'd been prodding rather relentlessly at the assortment of lettuce leaves and varying vegetable chunks the school liked to call a _salad_. "Mn...my friend with the protein shakes is absent today and the one with the pastry problem got busted for a fight."

"Oh."

"So I dodged out on sitting with people I _didn't_ want to sit with. But don't think that means I _wanted_ to sit with you. You're not anything special." Denial, denial. It rode out on his breath and into his conversation, as if saying it aloud would make it true. "By the way, my name is Riku." And that offering of his name proved it all to be just that: _denial_ that he'd found someone..._intriguing_ enough to make him stick around and talk.

"Oh," the brunet said again, blandly, head hung and his fingertips fiddling with the opening of his bag of cheese puffs. Stab, stab, goes the guilt in his chest. Did no one else but this strange kid notice how much of an asshole he was? "Well, don't think I was sitting alone," the boy defended, straightening up somewhat but still avoiding eye contact, "because I wasn't. I was sitting with my friends Kairi and Selphie, but they went to the bathroom." He was met with a silence from the boy with the lunch tray. Laughing nervously, he felt as though he needed to add something to make it acceptable, and he did. "You know how girls are. They always have to go to the bathroom in big packs." More silence. More frantic, vocal duct tape, sloppily applied. "Like...animals or something."

"You're weird," Riku grunted effortlessly, stabbing some stiff iceberg lettuce with the plastic utensil and maneuvering it into his open mouth. Those big blue eyes gaped at him, pained and anxious, then quickly fluttered away as if they knew they had just given him an open peek into the brunet's soul.

"No. I'm Sora." Blunt, nervous, weak, scrabbling for that bead of sarcasm but only sounding innocent.

"Sora? That's your name?"

"Yes."

"That's a nice name."

"Thank you. Maybe you should go before my friends get back."

"Why? Don't you want a guy friend?"

"I thought you didn't want to make friends."

Oh. Well, shit, the kid caught him. And he was right. That was what scared Riku.

"I think maybe _you_ don't want to make friends."

_Smooth catch, Riku. Smooth catch— _

"I don't want a guy friend."

Riku paused for just a second, blinking dubiously, before he soured into a dark scowl. No one ever denied him like that; they _welcomed_ him. Who did this strange guy think he was, anyway? Copping an attitude with him? He took a slow breath, blazing eyes hooded as his chest tightened with something offended, something that was subtly scared of rejection. And he didn't know why. So he retorted:

"Why not? Are you afraid one might come along and steal away one of your girl friends?"

"_No_."

"Then why?"

"I just don't want a guy friend. Maybe you should go now."

"I'll go when your _girl_ friends ge—"

"_I don't want a guy friend!_" Sora shouted, slapping his palms to the tabletop. Riku's tray jumped, rattled. His eyes widened. Sora's can of Coke echoed the lunch tray. And their private lunch table fell agonizingly silent, but the rest of the cafeteria buzzed away. Thus are the goings-on of students so easily ignored by the rest of the lot.

Clearing his throat, feeling as though it was seriously his blunder here, Riku awkwardly took a bite of the breaded chicken speared on his fork and then pointed the naked utensil in the direction of the snacks spread out before the brunet's hanging head and fidgeting knuckles. Desperately blowing off the sight of Sora's shoulders trembling, Riku swallowed and grunted, "You're eating a lot of junk food."

Sora blinked, slowly looking from one item of "junk food" to the next as if not even realizing it. He examined his half-empty can of cold Coke, his bag of pretzels, bag of cheese puffs, and bag of mini-cookies. Then he blinked again and settled a spacey stare upon Riku's adamant, righteous frown.

"It's all I eat."

"You're lucky."

"...Because I eat junk food?"

"No, because you're so slender."

Sora stared at him again, blankly at first, and Riku pondered on whether or not it would have been better to use the simple term _skinny_. But Sora wasn't skinny, he was just...petite. _Here I am telling myself over and over that I don't care, I don't care, and now I'm trying to _mend_ it with this kid. I'm a loser. But he's not annoying, and he's not loud, and he doesn't seem to care only about popularity—_

"Thanks, I guess."

"Uh. Yeah."

"So...Riku."

"What?"

"I was just making sure I had it right."

"Why do you eat a lot of junk food?"

"I don't do it on purpose."

"Oh."

An unsteady silence blanketed the lunch table and Riku frowned. They were too alike for the good of a friendship; he was brutal and Sora was tetchy. Neither were extroverts so it was awkward.

But something just tugged and tugged at his heart. Something made him want to keep talking, and he did so because he'd never felt that way with anyone before. Sure, hanging out with Wakka and Tidus was relaxing because the three knew each other's boundaries and interests and what-not, but this was new and fresh and _risky_. It was exciting.

It was intriguing.

What kind of kid didn't eat junk food on purpose?

Riku forced a light smile, but it felt as though it curdled on his face so he rid of it hastily and turned his tray sideways, offering Sora some of his food.

"No," the brunet said curtly, and pushed a mini-cookie into those pink lips and onto that pinker tongue again. And at the startled, offended scowl darkening Riku's sea-green eyes, those piercing aquamarine irises that had struck him speechless at first and made him shiver, Sora added hurriedly, "But thanks, though, Riku."

Riku quickly filled his mouth with a forkful of food and looked somewhere else as he chewed. _So...Riku. I was just making sure I had it right. But thanks, though, Riku. Riku, Riku, Riku. Riku._ He liked the way it sounded, falling from those lips.

"Are you a junior?"

"No." Those same lips smacked on fingertips, cleaning the residue of cheese powder that dusted his skin there. And then Sora laughed suddenly, endless blue eyes squinted in his mirth and drawing Riku's attention to just how dark his lashes were, and he leaned back, holding his stomach and laughing as if it were the most hilarious question in the world.

"Do I look like a junior to you?" Sora snorted when he finally eased back into a calm, slouched against the table with his elbows propped on its surface. Flippantly, he took a sip of Coke.

"Well, uh, no. I guess," Riku mumbled in response, frowning sharply. It wasn't so much because he didn't want to be laughed at as the fact that he _liked_ the laugh. That he wanted to hear it again, that there was an anxious little happiness inside him that he was responsible for sparking that laugh. "Then are you a sophomore?"

"I can't believe you think I'm older."

"You're a fucking freshman, aren't you?!"

"Ahahah!" Sora smacked the tabletop, doubling over and hugging his belly again, in total stitches at Riku's speculations. Riku angrily finished his lunch and crossed his arms on the surface of the lunch table, turning his glare and settling it on the floor, waiting for Sora to come to a halt.

"Yes," he finally replied, a sudden innocuous flare to his disposition. It was as though his shyness had melted away.

And, Riku considered, perhaps his own hostility was beginning to fade. Perhaps he...

"You're a freshman?"

Sora wiped his eyes from the laugh-induced tears. "Yes."

"I'm a sophomore."

"Why are you asking me, anyway?"

"Because I want to be your friend."

Sora froze. Wide blue eyes searched out truthful green ones in a panicked stupor. "What?" he murmured, obviously disbelieving. "You do?"

"That is, if you want a guy friend."

The bell rang and the buzz of the cafeteria exploded into a full-blown roar of disappointment as trays clattered and bags were gathered, conversations racing to an end before tardies were handed out. Sora remained where he was, gawking up at Riku even as the older boy climbed to a stand, hoisting his backpack onto his shoulder and picking up his empty tray.

Sora stood as well, avoiding the other boy's gaze, lifted his bag and draped the satchel strap over his chest, ate the last mini-cookie, crumpled the bags, and snatched up the rest of his trash. "We'll just have to see about that," Sora said then, casting Riku a stealthy glance from the corner of his lowered lashes, letting the words drip off his mouth invitingly but warningly. And the last that Riku fully comprehended was the incredible, depthless _blue_ of his eyes, intensified by the color of his thin cotton T-shirt, before Sora whipped his face in the direction he was going and the confusing little freshman threaded into the crowd of students, disappearing like a pro.

Stunned and not entirely positive _why_ he was so affected by the coy yet oh-so sarcastic kid, Riku scowled. This was so unlike himself that it was kind of frightening, but—there was that goddamn word again.

Sora was _intriguing_ him to his very core.

Suddenly Riku recalled his dryer problem—he wasn't aware of where the memory had spurred from, most likely to stubbornly distract himself—and he spun on his heel, dumping his trash, leaving his tray at the window, hurrying out of the cafeteria and hoping he could catch Tidus coming out of detention so he could inquire upon mechanic skills, or the lack thereof.

But he couldn't get that last luscious impression of Sora the strange junk-food freshman who didn't want a guy friend out of his head.

* * *

"I can't believe you got Riku to sit there—"

"Have you been talking to him and you didn't tell us?!"

"Shut up, you guys." Sora flung open his locker and shoved his nose into it, leaning in as far as he could—which was all the way until his shoulders bumped the frame, so he sagged down to prop his chin on his textbooks, slumping into the pocket of cool air and closing his eyes. He took in the placidity of the tiny area, uninterrupted by the commotion of the school hallway or the two girls beside him. It smelled like Swedish Fish in his locker; he opened one dark blue eye to reassure himself that the yellow bag of red candy was still in the left corner with his extra pens. Yup, still there.

"Oh, don't be like that, Sora," Selphie chastised with her normal air of stifling femininity. As he pulled himself out of the comforting locker womb, feeling rather put on the spot and not enjoying it one bit, she leaned in towards him and her bubble-gum pink lips perked in a teasing grin. "It's about time you got a boy friend."

"Say 'guy friend' or 'friend who's a boy', or even 'male acquaintance'," Sora instructed moodily, avoiding the cloying smell of too much perfume that had accompanied Selphie's breach of personal space by waving his locker door to and fro as a pseudo fan. Remotely, he wondered if it really wasn't that apparent by the skewed pout on his face that he was very annoyed, or if it was just the tenacity of fourteen-year-old girls and their universal state of boy craze. "If you say 'boy friend', everyone will think the wrong thing."

Selphie sighed quite dramatically and shifted her weight to the opposite foot, professionally cocking one hip out to the side as she countered, "I thought Sora didn't care what other people thought about him."

Sora stopped swinging his locker door and he stared at the girl challenging his veracity with a look both irate and petulantly incredulous. Blinking in silence, he licked his lips, before he opened his mouth further to retort back that _Sora_ was well aware of the codes and secrets and unspoken rules of high school conduct and _Sora_ didn't want to hassle with any apathetic student's wrong assumption and the ridiculously immature rumors following such, and _Sora _would much rather speak in first person instead of third person, but he was cut off by Kairi's sense of bad feelings and her prompt interference:

"Will you two stop it? Selphie, you're not helping at all. Sora, she's just teasing."

Sora very well deflated in defeat, all his tetchy words exiting in the form of a long exhalation as he turned back towards the contents of his locker; Selphie twisted into an injured frown, readjusting her backpack to a more comfortable position. Sora got the vibe that there was some kind of tension between Selphie and he. She too often seemed close to belittling him, treating him like a baby brother she needed to protect—perhaps because she sensed the sisterly way he looked at Kairi and vice versa, and that made her envious. But Selphie was Kairi's friend so Sora dealt with it, no matter how redundant and sly it became.

"You're _so_ lucky," the other girl started up again, stepping closer to the line of lockers so as not to obstruct anyone's path. High school students had a general lack of the phrase _Excuse me_. "You should introduce us."

"I'm not going to introduce you, Selphie...and what do you mean?" Sora mumbled. He had to admit, he was slightly—and _just_ slightly—interested in the girl's feedback of lunch and what had happened while they had been chatting in the restrooms. It wasn't because of popularity, because he'd definitely heard the name Riku come from more than one person's mouth since the first day of school, and it wasn't out of selfish desires either. He just...wanted to know. It _was_ high school: ulterior motives and general reputations were what everyone _except_ Sora seemed to care about, but would it hurt to be curious at least once?

Kairi's eyes almost bugged after the inquiry had left Sora's mouth, though she didn't blame him—he was a boy after all, and she knew how much of a space cadet he could be. Painfully withdrawn at times, too. "It's _Riku_. Riku Hayate? He's a killer soccer player, and he's a real smooth guy, too."

"I love his eyes," Selphie added with a dreamy flicker of her own.

Kairi ignored her. "He's quiet and I heard from one girl that he's really—"

"Quiet?" Sora reiterated in disbelief, recalling his conversation with the apparently notorious Riku, which had been _anything_ but quiet and smooth. The guy had been societal turmoil. "I know who he is, and I know how he is, Kairi. But I want to know why I'm _lucky_."

"He's _hot_!" Selphie cried as though it were the most sufficient explanation in the world. Which, to her as well as the rest of the female population of the school, it appeared to be.

And, unfortunately, Kairi agreed: "He _is_. A lot of people wish they could talk to him like you were, but he blows them off."

"Then why the hell is he so cool?" Sora slouched back a few inches from the enthusiastic girls with a quite passionate scowl, pulling books from his locker and then closing it harshly, slipping the texts into his open backpack. Kairi caught a glimpse of his dark frown and she nudged Selphie's wrist as inconspicuously as she could. The other girl wasn't stupid at all; she understood exactly. Whether this was because it was a collective skill of passing on unspoken thoughts that every girl possessed, or just the established fact that Kairi was the only one who knew how to soothe Sora's attitudes, or _both_, it went unsaid.

Selphie pursed her lips and peered contemplatively at the brunet fastening his backpack and snapping his combination lock shut, and then she began to weave her way into the hallway traffic, excusing, "I'll just see you guys later." She waved apologetically at Kairi. Sora didn't look up.

Sora hoisted his bag up to drape comfortably on his shoulder, turning and trotting off in the direction of his next class. Kairi anxiously shifted from foot to foot as she slammed her locker shut and scooped up her bag, waving in return to Selphie and hurrying after her other friend before he was lost in the student body jointly making its way to the next period. She dodged an accidental bump into other students, calling, "_Sora_! Hey, Sora, stop!"

He cast a disinterested glance at Kairi through his lashes as she caught up to him, brows knotted above turbid blue eyes. Kairi almost opted not to say anything more as they hurried down the linoleum and rounded the corner with the broken drinking fountain, because after years of knowing him they were as closely tied as brother and sister, and she _knew_ the look on his face.

But her woman's intuition urged the words out:

"Sora, does he know about Roxas?"

His dark lashes fluttered as he blinked rapidly, seemingly blind-sided by the familiar name, and then he pinched into a distraught frown that pleaded to be left alone, left to his solitary, coy self, but he answered her anyway. He answered softly and yet his tone cut right through the noisy hall, "It doesn't matter. That was the first time we've ever spoken and I doubt we ever will again."

Kairi frowned, deeply, and reached out to clutch Sora's hand. Out of habit, he squeezed her thin fingers with the nails painted light pink in response, and then he diverged to the side and entered the classroom there, leaving Kairi out in the hall as the bell overhead rang to announce the beginning of fourth period.

* * *

Riku considered fleetingly that to anyone other than him, the night-time sidewalks in this part of town would be rather frightening. They were dark, the space between municipal street lamps was too broad, the houses off the pavement seemed to mock the lonely civilian who believed they were of any protection; as he walked with the bulky laundry bag cinched shut, slung over his shoulder and bumping against his back in rhythm with his footsteps, he did not glimpse at the overflowing or overturned trash cans, or the littered sewer grates, nor did he acknowledge the tire swing that lay, dead and neglected, in someone's lawn because the rope had been severed or snapped. The neighborhood actually looked worse in daylight, and it seemed rather peaceful to Riku when the sun had set and the moon was rising.

It wasn't dangerous at all. There were no alleys between houses or street corners, and even if there were, it wasn't a city slum so there were no bad men slinking along in the shadows to offer drugs, favors, or communicable diseases, no sudden violence to be wary of. Everyone was locked up in their tiny houses, setting up dinner on their coffee table, T.V. trays, minute dining tables, and turning on sitcoms or the local news; and what occurred behind each and every closed door gaping at Riku as he trundled by _remained_ behind each and every closed door, within the privacy that sometimes leaked out into the public by the living room windows that revealed little snippets of supper on the couch, a nagging parent, child victims of sugar highs, and other mundane evening routines. Much like a muted movie, he guessed.

Riku thought it was peaceful, out in the crisp October night air, jacket zipped up and the collar brushing his chin. The dull echoes of his foot-steps, rubber soles greeting concrete softly, the chirping of crickets and the occasional rush of a car turning somewhere a few blocks away, all greeted him comfortably and they were sounds he preferred after exiting his own house and its usual seven o'clock customs. When the door had closed behind him, the television had been on and the volume had been cranked up, the dishwasher was running and his father was bellowing about something or another, a beer clutched properly in his hands. His mother had been seated on the couch beside him, finishing her dinner because she was always the slowest eater out of all three, and the only lights on were the ones Riku had turned on in the kitchen and his bedroom.

So the fresh air was better than the stuffiness of his home, the _pad-pad-pad_ of his sneakers and the noise of cars driving by on the main road were better than the sitcoms and the bitching, and the fact that Riku was walking alone across the street towards the Laundromat made him feel a bit more at ease. It was disgusting how his parents were _content_ with it, _content_ with the sloppily built house that would be sloppily managed if Riku wasn't there to do it for them, _content_ with nothing to do but sit on their asses and watch sitcoms they rarely even laughed at, _content_ with barely scraping up enough money to _keep_ the television they stared at while they ate dinner on the couch and behind them Riku ate dinner at the table in the corner of the kitchen.

He could hear Tidus in his head, rebuking him with that sheepish grin that told him he was right and Riku _knew_ he was right and even if Riku denied it, he'd still be right: _You're just not content with anything, are you, Riku? _

What was contentment, anyway?

Riku grunted as he swung the bag of dirty clothes down onto the concrete outside the Laundromat, quarters jingling in the pocket of his jeans. The bag made a substantial _fwump_ as it hit the ground. Pushing open the glass door of the building, the roar and the heat of running machines rushing out in one great burst of laundry-smelling air, Riku maneuvered a secure grip on the top of the thick cloth sack, hoisting it up and stepping through the threshold into the Laundromat.

And the first thing he saw as he looked up again froze him where he was, one step inside and one step outside, gawking right into the eyes of the only other person using the public utility—they were eyes that pierced right into him, wonderfully profound cobalt that seemed just as surprised and yet somehow not, staring in direct return. The gaze was mysteriously clouded in a fashion both casual and anxious, guarded by long, dark lashes and accentuated by a light blue T-shirt.

"What?" Sora demanded suddenly from where he was leaning against one of the metal tables that stretched from one end of the Laundromat to the other.

Riku blinked a few times as if it were really an illusion and it would melt away if he continued trying to clear his vision, but he knew it was real and he tossed the bag straining his arm muscles inside the building, letting it hit the door of an unused machine and flop to the tile flaccidly. He continued walking in, closing the door behind him. Not once did he take his eyes off the other boy, examining his entire presence from his folded arms to the black hoodie tied carelessly around his slender waist, the duffel bag at his feet and the house key, bottle of Coke, and bag of Fritos spread atop the table behind him.

Great. He was alone with this—_If anything, intriguing_, something like his conscience bit at him—eccentric kid in the Laundromat at seven P.M., and he was already getting an attitude from him.

"Nothing," Riku finally replied, and unfastened his jacket as he shuffled to the side and tended to his laundry. He could feel the weight of Sora's gaze on his back as he opened up a dryer and began to shove damp clothing into it. He still felt it even as he slammed the porthole door shut and withdrew the coins from his pocket—

And, like a jackass, accidentally dropped a quarter.

Riku watched, in impassive, cynical amazement, as it rolled directly under the machines and out of reach, destined to forever be misplaced with the dust bunnies and dead bugs. He waited for it to thunder outside, because God _had_ to be laughing at him right now—oh, yes, holding His big belly and rolling around up there laughing His ass off because Riku had possessed exact change and had now lost twenty-five cents of it.

"Do you need a quarter?"

Riku edged a glance over his shoulder, peeking at the brunet across the room from below his lashes. That ridiculous freshman looked like he wasn't sure what to be at the moment—amused or cautious. Riku turned slightly, nodding as he exhaled heavily in defeat.

"Yeah," he murmured, and then he couldn't help himself, "if you have one left after putting the vending machine out of service."

Sora's brows knit together faintly and he shifted from one foot to the other, glanced at his snacks, and then flicked a stormy gaze back over to the silver-haired sophomore. "I didn't get those from a vending machine. I bought them at 7-11 on the way over here," he responded blankly, as though the greater part of the sarcasm in Riku's previous statement had gone totally over his head. Which wouldn't have been too improbable. There was a difference of a few inches between the both of them.

"When did you get here?" Did he really care? No, but he might as well start some conversation. It wasn't _like_ him to start conversation though, but Riku hid from this recognition and trudged over to Sora, holding his hand out for the quarter. Sora tilted his head, pursed his lips, rolled his eyes up to the ceiling in contemplation, rummaged in his back pocket for a quarter, and as he placed it delicately into Riku's waiting palm, he guessed:

"Five minutes ago, maybe."

Great.

Riku sighed through his nose in exasperation, but then decided that he'd rather deal with Sora than with his folks, and he crossed the room again to slide the quarters into the dryer. Sora watched him silently, slipping the coins in one by one, and he wondered momentarily about asking why Riku was at the Laundromat. He reached for his Coke, unscrewing the cap and lifting it to his lips as his common sense reared the fact that if he asked that, he would be revealing that he, himself, went to the Laundromat more often than that particular night, and then what would Riku think of him?

But Sora didn't care what people thought of him—and especially not what Riku Hayate thought of him—but couldn't Riku be worrying about the same things at the same moment because, after all, he was popular and—

"I hate the smell."

"Hunh?" Sora sputtered gently at the mouth of his Coke bottle, and Riku peered curiously over his shoulder at the sudden choking sound.

"I hate the smell," the taller boy repeated.

"You get used to it, I guess."

"Do you not have a washing machine or something?"

Sora blinked, stopping mid-twist as he replaced the cap of his soda pop. "What do you mean?"

"To get used to it, you have to come here often."

Sora almost dropped his bottle of Coke. Heart sinking to the pit of his frame, brows furrowing in shamed embarrassment, he realized that he'd just stumbled into a second way of admitting he went to the Laundromat regularly, and he had done so in complete ignorance. What a dope.

"...Yeah," he murmured, flicking his gaze elsewhere. He couldn't stand the way Riku was staring at him, because he couldn't discern if it was pity in his wonderfully aquamarine eyes or something else—

Wonderfully aquamarine eyes? Sora's embarrassment deepened as he remembered Selphie's ecstatic squeal of, _I love his eyes_!

"We don't have a washer and dryer," Sora resumed to break the sudden silence, concluding that he'd already grabbed the shovel and started digging his own grave, so why not lie down in it? He _really_ didn't care what people thought of him, but he couldn't shake that slight disappointment, that slight yearning to impress the sophomore across the room.

"My dryer is broken," Riku offered in return. He shrugged off his jacket, dropping it to the surface of the opposite table; it was too hot in the little building to be wearing it.

"Riku, why are you out here at seven?"

"I've been busy until now. Why are you?"

"I don't like being at the house alone, so I try to find things to do until my mom gets home."

Riku glanced at Sora from the corner of his eyes; he was seemingly unaware of the depth of what he'd just said, innocuously examining the ceiling as he munched on a few corn chips. And Riku didn't really mind either way that a small concern began to grow in the recesses of his chest, concern growing from Sora's obvious insecurities and fears, so he prodded, "What time does she get home?"

That was when it hit the other boy. That simple question was what reminded him of what he'd just said. Sora stopped chewing for a few seconds, then resumed and slowly turned to stare at Riku with a look something like a calm version of a deer in headlights. But he was silent, only chewing and staring. A number of minutes passed, long minutes like eternities that Riku spent gawking into the dark blue of Sora's eyes as Sora gawked right back, and while he did so Sora ate slowly and Riku stood stock-still, knowing he wasn't going to get an answer to his inquiry, and that was a rather poignant realization that made him frown softly.

The buzzer on the running washer went off. Sora broke the stare-down, walking over to the machine and switching the wet laundry into a nearby dryer. Riku watched, observing the way that the light blue T-shirt moved on the younger boy's lean frame, how his thin arms managed to maneuver such a big load in only a few moments, and then Riku soundlessly walked over to sit on the table beside Sora's Fritos and Coke. He picked up the single key lying beside the snacks, on a black lanyard dotted with little white silhouettes of Mickey Mouse's head, and he was idly turning it over and over in his fingertips when it was abruptly snatched away from him.

Sora cast him an undecipherable glance as he shoved the key into his pocket, lanyard hanging out, and picked up his bottle of Coke, unscrewing it for another drink. The dryer was running. Riku blinked at him, hands falling limp to his lap. "Is that your dinner?" he asked.

"Pretty much," Sora responded complacently, lashes lowered as he picked up his said dinner and popped a few corn chips into his open mouth. His disposition clearly demanded that all pity be discarded, and Riku wondered how Sora would act if he only knew that Riku came from a similarly imperfect situation. A smile perked at his lips as he watched Sora eat, the brunet seeming to ignore him but most likely doing just the opposite. The empty Fritos bag was being crumpled up and tossed into the trash bin in the far corner when Riku's dryer buzzed upon completion, ending his intrigued contentment. His smile faded and he slid off the tabletop, answering the call and flinging the door open, shoving all the clothes back into the laundry bag as he seriously considered leaving the dryer at his house broken for a few more weeks.

"See you tomorrow. Have fun tonight," Riku grunted dryly as he cinched the opening of the laundry bag, tugged on his jacket, and slung the heavy bundle over his shoulder, pushing open the door and nodding at the other occupant of the Laundromat. Sora stood exactly where and exactly how he had when Riku had entered forty minutes before, but he nodded in turn and replied:

"Yeah, see you later."

He didn't want to acknowledge it completely for fear of ruining it, but from his peripheral vision, Sora saw Riku glance at him from outside the glass facade of the building, and it warmed him up inside because Riku had enjoyed the forty minutes enough to look back a second time. Not that Sora cared what Riku thought of him, that is. It was just nice to crawl out of his shell and enjoy forty minutes with someone, especially when that someone mutually enjoyed them.

When his laundry was done, Sora folded everything up neatly, creating two separate piles, one for his clothes and one for his mother's clothes. Then he packed them carefully into his duffel bag, slipped his hoodie on, and grabbed his bottle of Coke as he draped the strap of the bag on his shoulder, exiting the Laundromat and hurrying in the direction of his house. He didn't like being out at night; the chance of something or someone lurking in the shadows frightened him even though he knew it was a mere fear and a rare possibility. But it was still a possibility and he was acutely aware of that. He just really didn't trust the world, even for twenty minutes of fast-walking home.

So Sora locked the front door immediately after closing it, put his mother's laundry away in her drawers and closet and tossed his own at the foot of his bed, opened a can of Spaghetti-O's because he was still hungry and ate about half of it, then curled up with his blanket on his mom's bed and watched the television that sat on her dresser until he began to drift off. Sprawled atop her bedding was how she was accustomed to finding him when she returned home, and never any other way.

* * *

**A/N: I really can't wait to get all this out of my mind and onto paper. Metaphorically speaking, of course.**

**It's moving along, I swear. xD**

**Reviews much welcomed: let me know if there's something you didn't like, something you're wondering about...reviews help a lot. For real.**

**As far as Riku's surname:**

**Hayate — **_**smooth**_


	2. The Domino Effect

_**Candy Boy**_

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the amazing franchise © Disney and Square Enix; everything else © their rightful owners. **

**Ratings/Warnings: M—profanity, graphic themes, AU**

* * *

_Chapter Two_

* * *

Kairi and Selphie never ate lunch. Perhaps it was a teenage girl thing, a self-conscious method of starvation, or maybe Sora was wrongly assuming they were shallow and it was just because they were afraid of the processed food the school served on trays. Either way, they never purchased cafeteria lunch and instead would beg him for a chip or two, a sip of his Coke, and then sigh in chagrin because they'd eaten junk food between breakfast and dinner. So after daintily plucking a few snacks each, they were talking about something that had occurred in gym class earlier, something Sora wouldn't understand because the classes were separated by sex, and it left him out of the conversation to eat his lunch as prey to his thoughts.

_I want to be your friend, _he'd said at lunch yesterday, and _See you tomorrow_, he'd said at the Laundromat. Wasn't that some kind of promise that Riku would at least say Hi, at least acknowledge that the two were acquainted? Or was it just common courtesy to say _See you tomorrow_ when you were about to ignore something like that completely?

But there had been something, Sora considered with an inquisitive frown as he sipped his proverbial Coke, _something_ in Riku's eyes that had been truthful, verifying that flippant _See you tomorrow_ as some kind of hidden message passed beneath his breath but one he wouldn't openly speak because he either didn't realize it yet or didn't _want_ to realize it for the sake of other things. He _had_ said, _I want to be your friend_. Perhaps the solution wasn't so complicated, like he was simply waiting patiently for Sora to go say Hi because he was unaccustomed to the ways of friendship.

Oh, God, he was starting to sound as analytical as Kairi or Selphie when it came to motives and actions of high school relationships, of the platonic type or not. Maybe he was hanging out with girls too much. Maybe he could use a guy friend. Sora slumped forward, resting his forehead on the surface of the cafeteria table as he closed his eyes. The tabletop smelled like lemon Pledge and bleach.

Something suspicious rang the alarm in the back of his mind, as a tentative heat settled across the flesh of his neck. It was a heat both intangible and yet entirely defined, the heaviness of someone's eyes that every human being had the talent to feel specifically, whether the culprit was found or not. It was the heat that made hairs stand on end, the sense, the _knowledge_ of being watched. But it wasn't creepy; at that moment it was simple intuition.

Sora straightened up a little, shifted his gaze up to peer at the two girls across the table from him to ensure they were still headlong into their conversation—something now about another girl in ninth grade, a "perfect slut" as Kairi concluded—and then he turned to look over his shoulder, moving slowly, subtly, smoothly. He flicked his gaze up and around the cafeteria, positive that his inner awareness would guide him directly to the eyes locked upon him. If he had been in any other place, he might have looked ridiculously paranoid, but at the lunch table it was generally overlooked—and Sora happened to look straight back into the eyes staring at him.

They were aquamarine, exaggerated by the silver hair falling about that pale face, one set in a stony yet irascible frown that instantly whipped away, caught red-handed. Simultaneously, Sora shivered, lips parting gingerly in a flustered kind of surprise, and he felt his cheeks flood with a heat that made him immediately spin back around on the bench and hunch forward amongst his vending machine lunch. Behind the table he sat at with his friends Kairi and Selphie was a space intended as a walkway, allowing students and teachers alike a path through the collection of tables in the crowded cafeteria. The table across that walkway was otherwise directly behind the one he sat at, and at this—quite full—table sat Riku Hayate and others. And Riku had been staring at Sora.

Lunch tables were quite marvelous tools in the perilous kingdom of high school.

"What's wrong, Sora?" Kairi asked suddenly, craning across the tabletop and frowning in worry at her friend. He looked up from where he'd slouched rather tightly over the surface of the table as if he'd forgotten their presence, and then he offered the two girls peeping at him, curiosity piqued as well as their concern, a timid, sheepish grin.

"Nothing," Sora replied hastily, and then a deviously interested impulse sliced through the ineptness and poked at his mind. He set his can of Coke opposite where it was, placing it beside Kairi's purse. His chips and Combos followed, and finally he stood and skirted the end of the table, sitting down on the other side next to the girl with the short mahogany hair and the startled indigo optics, blinking at him a few times in confusion.

"Okay," she murmured in response, and Selphie laughed at the random action. After a moment, Kairi joined in the mirth weakly, still perplexed but brushing it off as another one of Sora's charismatic eccentricities.

Sora ignored them. He drew a Dorito out of the little red bag and bit half of it off, chewing meticulously as he settled his gaze on the table across the free linoleum. Riku's table was perhaps three yards away from his own, a perfect sight and sound range for him. He pushed the other half of the chip into his mouth, allowing his thumb and forefinger to slip in as well so he could smack the cheese powder off the pads of them before it became a mess, and his lashes lowered on a returned stare placed stealthily on Riku, an impish smile trying to tug up the corners of his lips. It was a spacey smirk, cast flawlessly upon his visage.

Riku felt it, just as Sora had earlier. He shifted on the bench, feeling a little too closed in between the two people at his sides, and his gaze flickered up and across the room eleven feet to where it caught on Sora's profound stare. Riku tensed up, melting into an incredulous scowl at the other boy. The perpetrator just grinned and attempted to hide it by taking a sip of his ever-present Coke, not once removing his eyes. The girls beside him paid no attention whatsoever.

Sora knew what he was doing.

He wanted to make Riku uncomfortable, to get back at him for that one slip-up that he'd happened to catch.

Riku shifted again. It was _working_, that sneaky little bast—

"Sorry, am I bumping into you?"

Riku glanced to his left, frowning bitterly. Aerith was peering back at him with a knit brow and a water bottle in her hands. She wasn't as annoying as others so he really didn't mind sitting next to her; the silver-haired boy shook his head silently, then followed up with, "No, not at all."

"He doesn't mind, that's what he means. _Riiiight_, Riku?"

Now _that_ girl, Riku wished he could rip her head off and use it for soccer practice. The very keening of her voice revealed how high strung she was, and each time she cried out—which was often; it was as if she'd missed every day in kindergarten when you're taught the difference between "inside voice" and "outside voice"—it sounded as though her voice box wanted to just snap like the strings of a guitar too tightly wound.

But Yuffie was friends with Leon and Aerith, and that reserved a permanent seat for her at the table.

"I _do_ mind," Riku spat back, baring his teeth in a sharp, incensed frown in Yuffie's direction. "And what I do with my personal space is my business, not yours. Don't brown-nose, anyway, especially if you're just going to make stupid comments."

And, as every time, before Yuffie's offended huff could complete its path out of her mouth and the words could tear out in succession, tumble out of her mouth and scratch and rip at Riku's ear drum, someone stepped in. This time it was the uniquely valorous and elegant Tifa:

"Okay, cut it out, you guys. Geez, Riku, can't you calm down a little?"

"You can't tell _me_ I have to calm down when Yuffie has a constant overdose of caffeine and sugar—"

"They're called _energy drinks_, and if I may point out, you drink them every day before school!"

"Fine, then, you have ADHD."

"I bet she does. I bet youhave ADHD, Yuffie." Tidus.

"Is that what you take every morning? Ritalin?" Leon.

"_No_, I take—well, I can't tell you what I take, but—" Yuffie, choking on her words as she grew more and more disconcerted.

"Yuffie's on drugs," Cloud remarked calmly, and the majority of the table took a moment to laugh at the idea proposed from the misunderstanding. Even Yuffie contributed some giggles, although the pills she kept in her satchel bag were actually birth control and not prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; but only she and two others at the table knew that, so it was perfectly okay to laugh at herself. A person had to be able to do so to make it in the world.

Riku didn't laugh. To his right, Wakka laughed. He laughed his hearty accented laugh that somehow warmed up every conversation, and to his left, Aerith laughed. She laughed a chortling laugh into her knuckles, soft and polite. Riku shivered lightly, flicking a petulant gaze back across the cafeteria where, after a throng of students drifted by, it landed upon a rather sullen-looking brunet. The mischief gleaming in his eyes had disappeared, and instead he was simply...staring. Riku couldn't tell if he looked blank or poignant, and he sighed heavily and forcibly thought, _I don't CARE_.

But he did. And he wanted to go over and tell Sora that he didn't want to play games, that if he wanted to hang out, he should just say so, and so on and so forth. But he couldn't. Riku just couldn't; it wasn't in his social capacity to instigate a friendship, even if he so dearly wanted to.

If Riku had seriously thought about it—which was something he tried not to do when he felt he was getting too attached to something, case in point—he might have realized that he had stumbled quite stupidly upon the one thing that he had been considering a few nights prior. That missing _something_. He might have realized that Sora was that particular something, but instead he realized that Yuffie was talking to him and to that Riku scoffed rather harshly, "Shut up."

"I just wanted to let you know that your elbow is in Wakka's potatoes," Yuffie sniffed half-heartedly, though her eyes sparkled with vengeance.

Riku frowned deeply, taking the offered napkin from Aerith and cleaning off his elbow. "Leave me alone," he eventually mumbled, and climbed off the bench to deliver the dirty napkin to the trash can.

He took the open alley between the two tables.

Sora's gaze remained on him as he walked by, heavy and articulate. Riku tried to shake it, trying desperately not to yield to Sora's power, but he couldn't help it; he flicked a steady sea-green glimpse over his shoulder as he tossed the soiled napkin, meeting Sora's gaze and locking on to it seemingly impassive but quite positive that his message got through in that one glance.

And Riku was confident that it did, because Sora looked away as he crumpled up his empty Dorito's bag.

_Tomorrow_, Riku decided firmly.

* * *

Friday, Riku slid down across the table from him. He was well aware of the conversation that would be currently gracing his former tabletop, and perhaps a number of other tabletops, something about what the hell was Riku doing, or does Riku know that kid; there was definitely a number of potential topics but he didn't care one bit.

Sora regarded him with an unreadable gaze, seeming to fidget on the bench across the table. Kairi and Selphie had somehow disappeared, probably thinking they'd pulled a Houdini but had only pulled the wrong nerve, because Sora appeared to be feeling the direct effects of their absence. Tenfold. He cracked open his can of Coke and took a long sip, gaze skittering around before falling on Riku and settling there. He swallowed, licked his lips, exhaled, and then said, "You're sitting here again, but your friends aren't gone today."

"I told you, I want to be your friend."

"And I told you, 'We'll just have to see about that'."

"I thought maybe the Laundromat was 'seeing about that'."

Sora seemed to soften at that. He smiled--or rather, the ghost of a smile passed on his lips as he pulled a bag of pretzels open and offered Riku the first handful. Riku denied it, pointing to his tray of food. Sora's hand hung in the air, sagged there, before he nodded some in acceptance of the rejection and brought the snacks back to his side of the table.

His heart was hammering his breastbone beneath his white T-shirt. The rubber toes of his beat-up red Converse were tapping madly on the dirty linoleum beneath the lunch table, and Sora found it hard to swallow so he took excessive sips of his Coke.

He hated how Riku intimidated him—just a little. And it wasn't even the typical kind of intimidation a freshman would get from a sophomore. It was different, and Sora knew just what it was. But perhaps what frightened him the most was that he wanted to brave that horizon and explore the new territory, despite the intimidation, despite the things that laced the back of his mind dangerously whenever Riku sent a harsh glance or twisted into a splenetic smile or stayed silent when the atmosphere called for conversation.

He didn't want to be afraid of Riku Hayate. He wanted to be his friend, unlike any other guy he knew.

"So you don't mind, right?"

"Hunh?" Sora breathed, eyes widening gently in remote surprise, a pretzel poised to enter his parted lips. Riku's gaze lingered on them for a moment, before moving up to grace the dark blue of Sora's abysmal eyes. He was silent, waiting for Sora to make connections.

Sora did. He blushed in flustered chagrin at his oblivion, and then popped the pretzel onto his tongue with a sheepishly humble grin as he chewed and reached for his can of Coke, the aluminum sweating beads of condensation. The long sip that followed refreshed his composure.

"No, I don't mind," he replied.

Riku blinked in silence, merely staring across the table and soaking up the other boy's presence. Then he nodded and shrugged at the same time, and ducked his head as he picked up his plastic fork to keep his face hidden. The shadow of a sincerely intrigued smile perked at his lips.

* * *

"You guys, I think he's seriously ditched us."

"Why are you keeping tabs, Yuffie? You think you'd be overjoyed."

"I _am_. This is my victory dance."

"YUFFIE! You knocked my milk over!"

"—_Ah_! Sorry, Tidus!"

"I wonder if they know each other."

"Who?"

"Riku and that kid."

"Maybe he'd just rather sit by him than us."

"It's because he can't stand Yuffie anymore."

"Oh, thanks, Leon. Why does everyone hate me so much?"

* * *

The heels of his red Converse danced anxiously on the pavement. He reached into the front pocket of his satchel bag, maneuvering his way into the yellow package there and pulling out a piece of candy, pushing it into his mouth to soothe his nerves. Swedish Fish had always been his all-time favorite.

All around him, the schoolyard was noisy and crawling with students. In front of him was the circle drive where buses and cars picked kids up and behind him was the grassy expanse of the high school lawn. The school was the most renowned along the northern coast, and a number of the students congregating the educational body were from surrounding cities as well as the one the school was located in. A small handful of them were even from the islands. Sora vaguely remembered living on the islands; his father had gotten a job on the mainland when he was four and they'd moved away to suit his commuting needs. The land wasn't much different on or off the main shore, but it sounded rather exotic—_Hi, I'm Sora, and I used to live on the islands._

Clouded blue eyes flickered up and searched the threshold of the high school, panning the constant flow of students exiting the building for that familiarly unique head of silver hair. He was wearing a black T-shirt with blue sleeves today, his customary black wristbands, faded navy jeans, and the black Converse he wore every day (pristine compared to Sora's scuffed ones). That didn't seem too difficult to spot in the ebbing adolescents.

_Would you be against me cooking you dinner some night?_

_...I guess you could._

It wasn't that he was unappreciative of Riku's concern. In fact, the very idea that the supposedly uncaring Riku cared enough about him to suggest making him _dinner_ actually made him very happy—and yet very wary. Riku had a mystifying _profundity_. Everyone made him out to be so simple, but since Riku had so unexpectedly sat down in front of him during lunch three days ago, Sora had only stumbled upon endlessly explorable depths. Sometimes he imagined that he was the only one who had that privilege.

_How about tonight? Come to my house for dinner. _

_I thought you wanted to make me dinner._

_I always make dinner._

He wasn't that unhealthy, was he? He wasn't so malnourished that this new friend of his—if he was able to establish him as such just yet—had to invite him over to _cook_ for him. Was he? Sora didn't know how to tell; as far as he knew, he was just puny. It had been a long time since someone had so much as offered to cook him a meal. Not just warming up Spaghetti-O's or popping a Lean Cuisine in the microwave, but cooking an actual _meal_. Inviting him over to his _home_ to fix an actual meal.

Sitting on the curb of the school sidewalk and hoping his toes didn't get run over by a bus, Sora was infinitely nervous. It wasn't Riku—he'd always possessed a knack for catching a person's true nature right off the bat and Riku was a good guy, he could tell. If a little stubborn and cynical, Riku was an amazing guy. At first he hadn't accepted the older boy's suggestion because he felt pitied, because he was afraid of clandestine intentions, but despite how flustered he became around Riku, he knew for a fact why he was so apprehensive about going to his house. Sora was well aware of why he was sitting on the edge of the sidewalk with tapping feet and his supply of Swedish Fish diminishing.

He didn't want to be let down. Not again.

_I should probably write down your address—_

_It would be easier if you walked home with me, I guess. _

There was really nothing that called for urgent completion at Sora's house. His mother would have already left by two o'clock, while Sora was in Algebra 1 and ripping his paper to shreds with his eraser, and when he'd woken up that morning to find her note on the refrigerator it had informed him of what shift she was working, when she'd be gone, what errands she was running, etcetera, etcetera, and all the rest. It said nothing of what needed to be done around the house, and that meant there was really nothing to be done. So Sora was free to do as he pleased until she came home, and it was afternoons like these that he had absolutely dreaded only a week ago.

"Are you really eating candy, _now_?"

Sora froze, mouth open and a Swedish Fish heading for its demise into his gaping orifice. Rolling innocuous blue eyes up to meet amused sea-green, he took a moment to comprehend the question and the arrival of his companion, then nodded exaggeratively as he eased the candy fish into his mouth with three dramatic chomps.

"I love candy," Sora explained as Riku stood beside him, hands in his pockets and observing the boy on the curb with an intensity only reserved for such intriguing occasions.

"Candy makes me sick very easily."

"I'm sorry."

"It doesn't matter to me."

"Swedish Fish are my favorite. Do you want one, Riku?"

"I just told you—"

"I know, I know. It makes you sick." Sora laughed. It was choppy. He was nervous. Riku shivered. To him, the sound was perfect.

"Whatever, candy boy." He nudged Sora's thigh with the rubber toe of his shoe. "Come on, let's get going. I have to do some things before four-thirty."

Sora kept his mouth buttoned for fear of saying something incredibly stupid in response to the four-thirty deadline. He felt incredibly prone to stupidity lately. Instead, he silently obeyed, draping his satchel bag's strap across his chest and following as Riku began a hasty stride towards the municipal sidewalk, avoiding clusters of other adolescents with a smooth agility. Sora stumbled after him to keep up.

_Whatever, candy boy._

Sora was captivated by the way that had sounded rolling off Riku's lips. It was endearing, warming him up from the inside out. Kind of like when his mother called him _sugar_.

"Sora!"

Riku halted before the brunet did. Sora turned around, eyes wide, just as wary as the older boy of who and what and why. He could feel Riku's frustration, impatient rage towards the unwanted interruption.

Kairi was coming to a stop in front of Sora, using him as a pseudo blockade but more or less slamming into him with all the grace of a quarterback. Grasping both his thin shoulders to steady herself, she caught her breath in gulps not entirely dainty. Her gaze flickered beyond his shoulder towards Riku, lit up in girlish alertness, then snapped back to Sora's puzzled—and somewhat suspicious—cobalt irises with a sly gleam in her own.

Behind him, Riku shifted his gaze towards the vast school building, hands still within his pockets. There was a good chance that _he_ could get apprehended next, by a curious Wakka or Tidus, or perhaps by a maneuvered Leon, and he didn't want to deal with anyone's petty invasions of privacy at the moment.

Kairi's brows furrowed and she laughed amiably; she pulled her hands away, letting one sag down Sora's arm where her thin, pale fingers curled on his wrist and tugged him back a few steps with her.

"Sorry, I need to borrow him for two seconds," the girl chirped. Sora glanced apologetically back at Riku, but Riku was surveying the schoolyard with a rather grim expression on his visage and no acknowledgement of Kairi's voice. Frowning, Sora turned to face Kairi once more, with a question gracing his features.

"If you don't mind, Kairi, we have to hurry. He has to get some things done before four-thirty."

"Sora, what are you doing?" There was a mixture of pure worry and pure curio in her eyes, well-hidden envy slinking in the indigo shadows near her pupils. "You haven't told me anything—"

Of _course_ she'd want to know what was going on. It was Kairi, first of all, which meant she'd scrutinize everything he did because she loved him just that much. He knew that. She was a fourteen-year-old boy-obsessed girl, second of all, and that meant her interest would be strengthened by hormones and emotions. He definitely knew that, too.

"He told me he wants to be my friend," he explained, letting the words drift out below his breath to keep them relatively inaudible. "He invited me over for dinner."

"Weren't you ever told not to take candy from strangers?"

"He didn't give me candy." Sora looked thoroughly perplexed. "What are you talking about, Kairi?"

She sighed heavily at his stupor, now clutching his wrist with both hands, her salmon-pink fingernails gently pricking his tan flesh. Selphie was waiting for her at the bus stop. They were going to hang out at Kairi's house until Selphie's mom got back from a doctor's appointment. "Look, I know I was completely freaking out because it's Riku Hayate," Kairi tried to suffice for her sudden change of heart, "and I'm sorry I seem really two-faced now, but yesterday you were all—" She twisted into an over-exaggerated scowl, mocking Sora's tantrum from the previous afternoon. "—'_Argh, I'm never going to see him again anyway_'. I'm just saying to be careful—"

"Because of _him_. Right?"

Kairi almost flinched, not because Sora had finished her sentence in a remarkably cross fashion but because he was giving her a look of incredible obstinacy. He wasn't going to change his mind about anything, and that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. In the stead of recoiling, though, she reached out and hugged him tight, feeling his nose press into her jawline and his wrists dust her waist in return.

Riku flicked a blankly critical glance towards them, and then it fluttered away as he shifted his weight to the opposite foot. He wished they'd hurry up with whatever it was they were discussing, for more reasons than one.

"Kairi, you don't have to worry about me," Sora said. She shook her head, giving him a rather awkward mouthful of hair. She smelled sweet and pungently fresh, like a citrus fruit or a recently bloomed flower.

"I'll always worry about you."

"Nothing to worry about."

"You'll have to tell me if he's a good cook."

Sora nodded, prying free of her embrace. Kairi backed away, arms crossed near her tailbone and her backpack hanging precariously on her shoulder. She smiled brightly, white skirt dancing on her thighs as a breeze picked up, and as Sora edged closer to Riku and the two boys began walking again, hurriedly, one of her hands shot up into the air and her bracelet jingled as she waved emphatically, all her teenage female charm and bubbliness coming back in a flash. She was confident she'd gotten her message through to her friend, and if not, she'd take matters into her own hands.

"Bye, Sora! Bye, Riku!"

Sora waved at her. Riku's steps increased in speed.

"Bye, Kairi!"

"What was that about?"

"Nothing...sorry."

"Does she like you?"

"No."

"How would you know?"

"I just know, Riku. She likes guys like you. I guess she has a soft spot for an unconditional jerk."

"...Heh. I have to hand that one to you, candy boy. That was pretty good."

"Thank you."

* * *

It was mid-October and it was a good seventy degrees out. Coastal cities sometimes lucked out like that.

They stood on the sidewalk at the end of the driveway, one with his hands in his pockets and the other with the laces of his Converse dusting the concrete flaccidly. Around them, the cul-de-sac was animate with the afternoon life of the unpretentious—the woman next door was weeding her feeble garden, a daily chore for her; across the street, a preschooler was scribbling on the cement with a fat piece of chalk, and Riku knew her well by her constant shrieking as she played, every afternoon, up and down the blind alley; a few houses down, three men with iced tea and cigarettes were contemplating the porch beneath their feet, which was in dire need of repair. It all went to verify how the residents ambled along, indifferent to the patchy lawns or the littered gutters or the fact that the girl across the street could step into shards of glass as she played hop-scotch with no shoes on.

The exterior of his house seemed meekly of middle class label. In the driveway was an old car that had broken down years ago, some of its missing, oxidized parts turned lawn décor near his mother's feeble rhododendron bushes. Riku had grown up on the choice between walking and public transit, and he had always chosen his own two feet.

"Welcome to the humble abode," Riku scoffed beneath his breath, motioning towards the little house for emphasis. "Man, I keep telling my dad that I think the toolbox rusting away in the yard is a touch too much as far as decoration goes, and I tell my mom that all those damn flowers will make the neighbors think we're conceited, but they just don't listen to me at all."

Sora frowned. To him it looked as if someone _lived_ there, whether it was painfully simple or not, and it was hard to look like you _lived_ somewhere when it was a one-floor town home that was boxed in among many others and looked exactly the same every corner you turned in the complex. "Yeah, all you need now is a plastic flamingo," he added dryly, and Riku graced him with some actual mirth, hands propped on his hips as he laughed.

"I'd kill myself if that stood in my yard."

"No, you wouldn't."

"...Well, of course I wouldn't...it's a figure of speech."

"Don't use it."

Riku stared at him, smile immediately dissolving. Sora stared straight forward at the diminutive house, then slowly shifted a sideways glimpse at the taller of the two, the intensity of that one cerulean glance establishing the fact that Riku had done something wrong but he could forget about it now. Somewhat stunned and somewhat discomfited, Riku turned and began trudging up his driveway, hearing the soft patter of Sora's steps following him.

The inside of the house put the outside to shame when it came to unkempt appearance. The gray-white walls were plain except for a few pictures here and there, prints of painted images of rolling golden fields and broad expanses of sky, and despite the sunlight filtering in through the window and the overhead switched on in the kitchen, it was still slightly dim as the boys walked through the front door and into the stuffy accommodation.

Riku closed the door and dropped his backpack at the mouth of the hallway, disappearing down the corridor for a moment and leaving Sora—rather unfairly, the brunet huffed—to fend for himself in the living room where a weary woman was curled up on a burnt-copper recliner with a paperback book in her hands. She blinked at him as if in disbelief, and he blinked back just as idiotically.

Riku appeared once again, and Sora took the opportunity to break his stare-down with the woman, flicking his gaze over to watch as Riku strutted into the kitchen. He was pulling his shaggy hair into a sloppy ponytail, just at the edge of his hairline. The ends of the ponytail dusted the base of his neck, other loose platinum shocks falling around his temple and ears. He seemed entirely not to care that it made him look...rather attractive.

Sora shifted uncomfortably at the front door.

_Okay, Riku, you can break the ice now. _

Riku didn't.

The woman—his mother, Sora assumed—noticed him bustling around the tiny kitchen and craned upwards, peering over the back of the sofa as she murmured quietly, "Hey, honey."

"What did you get at the store?"

"What you wrote down, hon."

"Did you get all of it?"

"I got what I could, Riku. You know I always do."

Sora slowly took his satchel bag off his shoulders and lowered it to the floor beside the front threshold as mother and son conversed, feeling almost like an intruder of privacy. His dark blue eyes flickered around the house, taking in the minimal embellishments and the horribly cluttered collection of papers, ash trays, and paper-back novels that lay all over the living room. Atop the television to his right was the shell of a beer, just an empty, tawny bottle standing to testify for its spent contents. The coffee table was littered with old magazines and mail, a glass of water on the end-table beside the woman in the lazy chair.

The woman in the lazy chair spoke:

"Riku, aren't you going to introduce us?"

Finally. It was about time—

"No."

Sora stared, dumbfounded.

"Fine, then. I will." The woman shifted in her chair, pulling her legs up and folding them in the other direction. "I'm Riku's mom, Suzume Hayate. You can call me Suzi, if you'd like."

Sora continued to stare for a moment, the sound of Riku in the kitchen wrestling the full trash bag out of the garbage bin echoing against his ear, until he realized that the lack of words indicated it was his turn for introductions. His words came out rushed and mumbled, although it was only his name:

"Sora Kaimana."

A screen door slammed as Riku left the house with the bulging trash bag.

"Kaimana?...That's from the islands."

Sora's lashes fluttered and his stomach pinched up in excitement at Mrs. Hayate's recognition. "I used to live on the islands," Sora explained coyly. "We moved here when I was four."

"What a small world," Suzume marveled in a faint voice, staring at the brunet boy across her living room as if she were suddenly seeing a familiar person. "Ichiro and I lived on the islands when we got married. Riku doesn't remember. He was barely walking when we moved to the mainland."

Riku had lived on the islands, too? Ichiro, he concluded, was Mr. Hayate.

A soft smile perked at the corners of his lips, and Sora braved the threshold of the living room to sit down rigidly on the sofa, against the arm farthest from the woman in the recliner. She beamed at him, but her eyes were dark and poignant as if her simple recollection sent her into melancholy. Sora could sympathize with that.

The screen door swung open and clattered shut as Riku entered the house again, brushing his hands off on the denim of his jeans and moving towards the laundry closet near the beginning of the hall, a small partition where the washer and (still broken) dryer hid from sight behind sliding doors. He glanced towards Sora as he strode by the couch, and felt remotely better that he was comfortable enough to sit down now—even though he had a feeling that his mother was going to talk until Sora never wanted to hear another word in his life.

The time was five after four, and Riku hurried about the rest of the chores while listening to Sora and Suzume talk. She asked him how old he was, what grade he was in, how he knew her son, all questions which Sora answered remarkably glibly for being so reserved. She asked if he had any brothers and sisters, if he liked this book or that book, what he preferred to do in his spare time, what classes he was taking and what he wanted to do as far as college and an occupation. About that point, Riku realized his mother was learning more about Sora than he had taken the time to at all, and that made him feel ridiculously egotistical; but he found it really interesting that Sora had ambitions to attend college and get a job as a photographer. But hell, his mom was so deprived of small talk she would have brought up the common debate of _boxers or briefs _had Riku not interfered at four-forty by announcing:

"Dad's home."

The house dipped into a sudden hush, unconsciously steadying for the man's entrance. Riku closed the cupboard and reached back, tugging the tie off his ponytail and allowing his hair to fall about his neck again; Mrs. Hayate lifted her book and resumed reading as though she'd never ceased a page; Sora glanced over his shoulder at the boy in the kitchen, searching for fortification.

Riku shook his head and motioned for Sora to come sit with him at the table in the kitchen's corner. Sora obeyed in a hurry, and as he plopped down on the chair with its sturdy back against the wall, he folded his hands atop the table's surface and focused on his knuckles while the front door opened. The respectful fear knotting up his gut was nothing he wasn't accustomed to, but somehow he felt as though he were intruding on the sanctum of the Hayate household affairs and that made the anxiety embarrassing.

"You get the chores done, Riku?" was the first thing the man trodding in and closing the door behind him asked.

"Yeah."

"You might as well start dinner, then. Will you get me a drink?"

And despite Riku's best efforts to expect something _acceptable_ from his father that night due to the presence of a visitor, the cold bottle of Budweiser he delivered to Ichiro Hayate was an ominous sign that something—just _something_—was going to happen that evening. The very suspicion of such already humiliated him, but Riku just returned to the kitchen, sending Sora a very contrite frown as he strode directly to the refrigerator and swung open the freezer. Sora understood the penitence in Riku's face, and that set him on edge the most; but he reverted back to the childhood mannerisms of being seen and not heard, and settled back into the chair like another piece of interior decoration.

Riku decided to make chicken kiev for dinner.

* * *

**A/N: A few notes on names and surnames (all obtained from Behind the Name):**

**Ichiro **_**— only son/first son/one son; **_**Suzume — **_**sparrow; **_**Kaimana — **_**power of the ocean**_

**And for those of you unfamiliar with chicken kiev, it's not as exotic as it might sound. It's rather cheap and found in the frozen food section. I swear it's not an elegant delicacy. Really. (But it **_**is**_** good. xD)**


	3. Come On Get Higher

_****_

Candy Boy

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the amazing franchise © Disney and Square Enix; everything else © their rightful owners. **

**Ratings/Warnings: M—profanity, graphic themes, AU**

* * *

_Chapter Three_

* * *

With the chicken kiev, he made a salad and non-instant macaroni and cheese, putting Sora's boxes of Kraft to infinite shame.

Sora watched him as he cooked, sitting silently in the back corner of the kitchen with his arms crossed on the tabletop; Riku was intent, clearly in a personal sanctity of recipes and ingredients that Sora could understand. In a world like the present one, a person had to have at least one thing that captured them completely enough to block out all the awful.

Yet there was just a simple passion about Riku as he prepared the meal that Sora couldn't help but notice, and he guessed that it was quite a plain fact—Riku just really liked to cook. He moved adroitly through the room, immersing himself into his motions in a deep way that brought the meal to a faultless peak of authenticity, of _home-cooked_, something that Sora was honored to be served. Riku's passion was something unpredicted and entirely genuine, a secret that Sora now knew and that Riku was willing to share with only him. The reciprocal understanding made him feel rather privileged—made him feel close to the other boy. And Sora found he liked that.

When the timer on the stove went off, signaling that the chicken kiev had been in the oven for thirty minutes, Riku turned off the oven, gave the macaroni one last adequate stir, and announced with a sigh, "Dinner is ready."

For a moment Sora wondered why Mr. and Mrs. Hayate were not getting up and approaching the stove to get their food—but then his brows furrowed on eyes churning with recognition, because Riku was placing cheesy shell pasta and chicken kiev onto two plates, one getting salad and the other not, and then he was taking both out to the living room. There he set them down on the abandoned magazines and papers covering the coffee table, precarious but still providing a relatively smooth surface.

"Thank you, Riku," Suzume murmured, still tucked comfortably into her chair. Her paperback novel was draped on her thigh, keeping the page.

"Do you want water, Mom?"

"If you don't mind."

"Will you get me another drink, Riku?"

"Sure, Dad."

Finally Riku was dishing another two plates, giving both all three parts of the meal and sliding them onto the tiny table in the nook of the kitchen. He swung by the fridge as Sora examined the food, still frozen against the spine of the chair, and as Riku pulled out his own seat to sit down, he handed a cold can of Coke and a fork across the table to his dinner guest.

Sora stared, lips parted but no words escaping. After a long moment struck dumb by the paralytic grasp of Riku's eyes, he blinked a few times to regain composure and grabbed the offered Coke, placing it next to his plate as he mumbled, "Thank you, Riku."

Opposite the table from him, Riku shrugged in response, and to Sora it was as if he was disregarding the gratitude because it was his role around the house either way and that left no difference whether there was a visitor or not.

The television was turned up as a second Budweiser was cracked open. A sitcom was on and the tinny, manufactured laughter of the audience drifted across the living room and into the isolated corner where they sat, not unbearable but still a coarse, raspy echo. Sora hooked his fingers on the pull-tab of his Coke, snapping it open and listening to the carbonation fizz away through the new opening.

Riku was drinking a Red Bull with his dinner. He sat with his elbow propped on the tabletop, cheek cradled in his palm as he lifted his fork and stabbed a few shells of macaroni and cheese. Sora shifted in discomfiture, feeling suddenly awkward, suddenly out of place in this family's evening routine. He felt like an intruder, and he could tell that Riku was just as uncomfortable, but hopefully for different reasons.

In the living room, Suzi Hayate started to talk to her husband, the words audible but incomprehensible from the distance and the thinness of her voice. Though, Sora had a hunch that Ichiro Hayate wasn't listening to her as much as he was listening to the sitcom on the television. It was a grim atmosphere, and for a moment Sora missed the placidity of his Spaghetti-O's and hot dogs and the silent house surrounding him as he dined alone, but then he began to eat and his appetite praised him for the choice.

"This is really good," he commented after a long sip of Coke to wash down his inhalation of chicken kiev and macaroni. "Way better than what I usually eat."

"Of course it is. It's not instant."

Sora halted with a forkful of macaroni on a path to obliteration in his gaping mouth. Flicking affronted cobalt optics up to stare incredulously at Riku as he went on eating obliviously, wondering if he'd even realized his insult before he'd said it, the brunette boy dropped his fork to his plate and insisted, "Instant food tastes just as good."

"Fine, then. Whatever—but this is a substantial meal with a good amount of the food groups in it." Riku took a sip of his Red Bull and licked his lips before continuing. "Protein, grains, dairy, vegetables. That's pretty balanced if you ask me, compared to a bag of Cheetos and some cookies."

To Riku, he was merely explaining his side of the matter. To Sora, it was a haughty display of knowledge and resources whether intentional or not. He shifted into an irascible frown, raising his fork again and opening his mouth for the approaching morsel—when he was interrupted again, by Riku's sudden grunt of an inquiry:

"You're from the islands?"

Sora glanced upwards sharply, a bit startled by the question only because he'd never mentioned his island heritage to Riku and it was an odd subject to jump off to after that of balanced and unbalanced meals, and then because he was unaware of how the knowledge of his island heritage had passed from mother to son without even a word exchanged. Giving up on that particular bite of macaroni and cheese and closing his mouth with a faint _click_ of his jaws, Sora mumbled resentfully, "Yeah. We moved here when I was four. Why?"

"My mom was telling my dad that you have an island name."

Sora flicked a glimpse towards the living room. He couldn't grasp a single, quiet word; they were all incoherent to him. Riku either had good ears or he was accustomed to the environment around them. He guessed it was a mix of both.

"Yeah," Sora agreed as he sliced into the chicken kiev. Garlic butter ran out and pooled on the plate, steaming. He stabbed the piece of breaded chicken and ensured there was enough garlic butter on it, then added, "Kaimana. That's my last name." before plucking the chicken off his fork with a scrape of teeth against metal.

"Mm."

In the living room, Ichiro Hayate barked out a laugh with the television audience. An awkward silence engulfed the tiny table in the kitchen.

"I mean it. This is good," Sora edged in attempt towards breaking the ice.

"...I forgot to ask you what salad dressing you wanted. Do you like Italian? Ranch?"

"I don't eat green things."

Riku stopped moving altogether. He regarded the boy across the table from him through his lashes and remained silent, the intensity of his gaze freezing Sora where he was as well. It reminded him of the day last week, when during lunch Riku had cast easy insults to and fro with that skinny girl with the black hair. He'd meant for his words to sound more playful, but apparently he'd made the wrong move.

"What are you, five?" Riku grunted, and Sora unconsciously flinched backwards just a few inches, fork clattering to the tabletop as his heart leapt to his throat in anxious chagrin. The emotion overwhelmed him, tightening his chest, and above it all he felt a heavy guilt because for a moment all he saw were eyes burning blue fire and a scowl with the rotted breath of insanity, all framed by messy brown hair and a reaching hand—

And then he blinked and it was just Riku, just profound Riku again, looking at him without hate and without conceit but with angry, immense _ache_. Sora could see right into the depths of his eyes, and in them Riku was perplexed.

Perplexed, and that was all.

It was _stupid_. It was just a salad. But, Sora realized, to Riku the meal was a display of amity. A token of friendship. A promise that he _cared_, a little bit at a time, but admitting that he _cared_. And Sora had denied it with enough inadvertent impudence to suffice for everyone in the house. He'd very well _insulted_ the guy.

Sora tried, "Riku—"

"You 'don't eat green things'? That sounds so..._ridiculous._" His voice was climbing in volume. That was just how Riku was, right? Belligerent, sarcastic, moody, and aloof. He wielded his words more than his fists. But damn, he'd really upset him. He would probably hate Sora forever, now; probably think he was dumb and immature and bratty after that.

"What are you yelling about, Riku?"

Riku looked to his mother implacably. It snapped the stare locking Sora in place, powerless to his embarrassment, and his head sagged down to hang with his unruly hair creating a curtain around his eyes, shoulders hunching in an unconscious act of defense. The bottom of a beer bottle clinked on the surface of an end-table.

"Nothing, Mom."

"Answer your mother, Riku, or else."

Riku shuddered. His father had just used that dreadfully abhorrent phrase in front of Sora, and it felt as though a thousand tons of shame crashed into his chest. He scowled in fury at everything, at his parents for embarrassing him, at himself for unfairly blowing up on Sora because of the all-around tension, at Sora for looking at him with so much apprehension that it almost felt like his torso were being physically ripped in two. Teeth clenched, Riku spat, "It's _nothing_, really. Sora just doesn't want to eat the salad and it surprised me, that's all."

"Well, maybe she doesn't like salad, Riku. Not everyone does."

It was as if the entire room halted, but the television kept moving and that fallacy of an audience kept laughing. Riku looked to Sora in mortification, and Sora stared back in complete shock. His big blue eyes were even wider than normal, mouth open a bit in a humiliated stupor, and his gaze weighed on Riku with so much reliance that Riku really felt like he might short-circuit.

Aghast, Riku didn't realize that he was clutching his fork in a fist so tight that his knuckles shook. "Mom," he gritted out calmly, "Sora is a boy."

"...Oh," Suzume managed as she looked guiltily to her son's guest, who was shrinking in on himself at her kitchen table. A coarse laugh erupted from the man sitting in the opposite lazy chair. It was a laugh that had the same result as the crunching of glass or the scratch of nails on a chalkboard, creating a flinch in the three surrounding individuals that each had hoped was unnoticeable. Two flinched because they recognized the laugh as the advent of an indecorous comment and the third flinched only because that was the effect most intimidating male authority figures instilled in him.

And the scathingly uncouth remark fell as such, a professionally executed double insult:

"Clearly he's not much of a boy if _you_ couldn't even figure it out, Suzi."

A dismayed, enraged sound escaped from the back of Riku's throat like the strangled mewl of dying words, words he didn't even know wanted to take flight from his tongue, and he stared in absolute revulsion at the back of the man sprawled on the hand-me-down recliner. Ichiro Hayate took another sip of his beer as if he'd made the most comfortable observation in the world. Riku's mother stared with a similar look on her face, ashamed and incredulous but totally powerless.

Yet the most alarming thing to Riku at that moment was Sora's silence. Sora was a quiet kid, but this was an unsafe hush. His dignity balanced unsteadily upon it, and Riku didn't want to hold blame for the crash of the other boy's already fragile self-confidence.

Funny, how he had come to care so much for Sora already.

Words ripped through Sora's bowed head, heart pounding in the anxiety that always accompanied the fleeting reminiscences—_filthy_, _unclean_, _pathetic, worthless_, and a pair of eyes the color of a dead, stormy sky. The cavernous silence in the Hayate household was daunting on his shoulders; Sora could feel tears prickling his vision at the recollections threading through his mind, scrabbling to ease out through his lashes and run down his cheeks in hot trickles of emotion. But he didn't want to cry here, not in front of these strange people. He would be more comfortable sniffling as he walked home, and at least then he'd be able to eat some candy without Riku casting some type of scorn in his direction.

And when he opened his mouth, he was fully aware that the words about to escape his lips were outright lies, but he knew no one would care to tell the difference.

"I have some things I need to do at home before my mother gets back," Sora proclaimed, and was pretty sure that only two pairs of ears registered his statement. He climbed out of the chair and drifted around the side of the table, feeling the eyes on him as he scooped up his satchel backpack and pushed open the front door—and he wasn't sure if it was because he was moving quickly or because everyone was still stunned, but _no one_ attempted an apology or a retribution.

His pride stung and his throat clenched up in disappointment, because things had been going so well between he and Riku until this evening. The most imperative effort towards being Riku's friend—something that had become a simple desire to the boy who lacked an interest in male friendship—had been totally and easily deflated, and Riku Hayate was probably pissed off that he'd wasted his time on such a lost cause. Sora didn't know why, but the prospect really upset him.

As he hit the end of the driveway, he heard a voice from inside the house, a familiar voice at a volume he'd never witnessed it before. Something along the lines of "—can't believe this—" and "—such a chronic jackass—" that was punctuated by the clatter of a screen door and a threatening Drop-The-Attitude-Now-Or-Else inanely chasing the loud footsteps currently stomping through the stiff grass of the front yard.

Sora hurriedly began to walk, at first thinking, _It's funny how there are so many different levels of dysfunctional homes. _He crossed four cracks in the sidewalk before he was stumbling to a stop because from behind him Riku had demanded, "Sora, _WAIT_."

So he stopped. He heard the approaching steps, the hurried _tap-tap-tap-tap_ of the rubber soles of Riku's black Converse on the slapdash sidewalk cement, and he wasn't so much surprised that Riku was coming after him as he was by the utter desperation in the boy's voice when he'd called for him to wait.

He wanted to keep walking, to just hurry back home and forget the awkward dinner scene because now he was wondering if it had all been a joke in the first place, some kind of prank Riku's table had talked him into after that first lunch period he didn't sit with them. But his nerves pleaded for a break and so Sora dropped his satchel bag to the sidewalk, plopped down heavily beside it, and crossed his arms on his knees to bury his head into. He wasn't entirely positive why he had decided to sit, but it felt much better than storming off and that was a plus.

Riku halted a few feet away from him, culpable and pissed, and he glanced hastily around the settling neighborhood as he realized—not without some resentment—that the two boys on the now empty street must be one hell of a spectacle, one of them the dour and aggressive Hayate boy pursuing an unfamiliar face to the cul-de-sac who had just dropped to the ground and begun sulking.

_What a scene_, Riku thought with his lips bit into a thin line. _Turn off your televisions, people, and look out the window. All the entertainment right here, you nosy assholes. _

"Sora, come on, stop," Riku tried to pacify the other boy. "Get up, you'll have everyone calling the police because they think some crap is going down at—"

"Is that all you care about?" Sora cried, and even though the words were muffled by his arms and thighs, it was still completely coherent. "Well. That's fine. I understand, Riku. I'll just go back home and you can never speak to me again, and you can even go tell everyone at school that I'm a loser and I don't eat green things and—"

"Will you be quiet? I'd _never _do something so shallow. Why does everyone think I'm like that?" Riku frowned bitterly, half because of the assumption and half because Sora was such a

_delightful, intriguing_

goddamn challenge. He stooped forward, clutched Sora's upper arm. "Now, get up—"

"Don't touch me." Sora's voice cracked on the last vowel and he rocked his body viciously to the side, ripping out of Riku's grip.

Riku recoiled exactly three inches back, and abruptly he didn't care about what the neighborhood would think, or what his father would say about the entire mishap, or that he'd knocked his Red Bull all over the linoleum that he'd _just_ swept and mopped as he'd rushed towards the front door—he only cared that Sora's reactions were scaring him, and it was a new kind of fright because he felt responsible for it.

And Riku was also a little frightened because that _intrigue_ that had been burning in his chest since the day he'd met the unusual freshman had spread like a contagious disease to his mind and now he suspected the _intrigue _had become _affection. _And Riku couldn't just leave someone he cared about sitting miserably on the sidewalk because he and his socially inept family had pretty much butchered his self-esteem.

"...Candy boy."

Sora's shoulders jerked. He tensed. His frown faded smoothly and he shifted his gaze over to meet Riku's from just above his shoulder. The older boy couldn't prevent a small shiver at the raw emotion in those turbid blue eyes. There were still traces of frustration fading away at the edges of his expression, but the look on his face was different. He was putting his guard down, and Riku knew he'd gotten through without even saying more than that nickname. Those mere two words had explained everything he wanted to, and possibly even more.

And he was infinitely thankful for that, because he was positive he'd never be able to put certain sentiments into words. Lucky for him, Sora seemed to be a master at reading eyes. The nickname seemed to soothe him; he pinched the collar of his T-shirt and yanked it upwards to wipe off his face.

Riku blinked. He hadn't been aware that Sora had been crying—and that just made him feel horrible all over again. He and his family weren't _that_ bad, were they?

Sora sniffed harshly as Riku crouched down beside him, not without some caution. Then he reached for his satchel bag, unzipping the front pocket and searching it for a piece of candy. Which, upon discovery, he urgently popped into his mouth like it was medication for his sorrows. And it seemed to work—Sora looked sheepishly towards Riku through his lashes, a forlorn uncertainty in his eyes.

"...Riku, I won't be mad if you hate me now."

"I don't hate you at all."

"I won't be mad if you think I'm pathetic."

"You're not pathetic and I don't think you are."

"You don't...have to be my friend just because I don't have any."

"Look, Sora, if I was doing this out of pity, you'd be aware of it."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't lie. _I want to be your friend_."

Sora blinked, peering in disbelief at the boy beside him. "Really?" he mumbled. "Like, all popularity aside and stuff? I'm an okay guy?"

"Yeah, you are." Riku paused. He smiled, a very dim smile that he didn't even realize had spread on his face; he looked at Sora with a playful curiosity that wasn't entirely mock. "So, all popularity aside, am_ I_ an okay guy?"

"You're a jerk!" Sora's honest sulk was topped off by another accidental, but quite indignant, squeak of his voice.

Riku's teasing smirk dissipated into a similarly petulant frown and he stood up to ease the strain on his thighs as he cried, "Me?! You've got a horrible temper!"

"But you think I'm an okay guy," Sora reminded him with a devious flick of a glance, beautifully bright blue that was clearing like the skies after a storm. Riku stared blankly, astounded and incapable of fathoming how rapidly the other boy's emotions could swing. But perhaps he was just nervous and relieved. Riku could understand that. And maybe the candy really _had_ helped.

Sora stood up again, brushing off the seat of his jeans and sniffling one last time as he hooked the strap of his bag across his chest, avoiding Riku's gaze out of sheepish chagrin though a gentle, sad smile graced his face. Riku watched him, slipping his hands into his pockets. The world seemed timidly back on balance, and Riku hadn't known that there had been such a weight on his shoulders until it was gone with Sora's poignant smile.

"Your dinner really was good, Riku...but I don't think I'll be finishing it. I'm sorry."

"What will you eat, then?" He clenched his jaws before a remark about Coke and Combos could be set free. Obviously he'd gotten his lack of compassion from his father—but as of very late he was rethinking everything he had to say.

"My mom left me money this morning because she needs to go shopping. She gets her paycheck today, but it will be too late to get groceries. I'll just get McDonald's." And to the intense stare he got in reply: "I'm _fine_, I _promise_, Riku."

"I'll walk you to the corner at Rhine and Fourth."

Sora regarded the other boy through his lashes, wondering why he had offered such a thing—but then he discarded the inquisitiveness because he'd rather it end like that, anyway, and he said, "Okay. Thanks, Riku."

Riku shrugged, and remained silent until they'd rounded the corner out of the cul-de-sac. There, he mumbled with a lop-sided, crestfallen smirk, "I bet it's really funny, isn't it? That I live in such a shoddy neighborhood."

"What do you mean?"

"No one would guess."

"It doesn't matter where you live. Home is where the heart is, remember?"

_How cheesy_, Riku thought, and he wondered if Sora had been serious or sarcastic. "Oh? And where is your heart, hnm?"

"The islands."

Riku cast a side-glance at the boy beside him. He was trudging along with a dreamy smile, dismal but entirely hopeful in flawless concurrence. It was an intriguing talent Sora possessed, to control total opposites in one perfect impression. "The islands?" Riku repeated, curious.

"Yeah. I miss them. When we lived on the islands...mm, everything was peaceful." Sora's optimism faded into a forsaken frown that Riku didn't understand, and he watched his feet as they continued walking. The sun was setting. Riku wanted to reach over and lift Sora's head, just because he wanted to know what his eyes were saying as opposed to the rest of him, but he easily restrained himself and looked back forward.

He eased the conversation rolling again: "My mom probably told you that they lived on the islands, too."

"So did you, she said. She told me you moved here when you were a baby."

"Wish I remembered. They must have been really nice."

"Your mom really likes to talk, hunh, Riku?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"I bet you guys talk a lot."

"Not really. She talks to me."

Sora's brows furrowed. He looked to the taller boy expectantly, a bit confused. Riku seemed indifferent, simply looking out in the direction they were headed even though Sora was confident he felt him staring. "You don't...talk back?"

"No."

Sora didn't get it; Riku's mother was always there and he didn't even care. But, he considered, Riku wouldn't appreciate her presence until _his_ mom was working two jobs.

"Hey," Riku grunted suddenly. Sora watched the toes of his Converse. The boy beside him went on, wanting to ensure they really were back on good terms, "I'm sorry. On my dad's behalf, I mean. He's unfit to be allowed in society, I know, but I can't really do anything about it."

"Clearly."

"And my mom just got confused. She doesn't get out much, and it _is_ kind of dark in my house—"

"I didn't take it personally."

"My ass, you didn't."

"It...reminded me of something, that's all. I just got very uncomfortable."

"Well, I'm really, really sorry."

Over their heads were the traitorously green signs for Rhine and Fourth. They had left the hushed neighborhoods and were at the beginnings of commercial zoning, where cars whizzed by and the sky was graying into evening along the city-lit horizon.

"You know, I'm home alone until after dinner. If you want to make up for tonight, Riku, you can come over and make something to eat at my house."

Riku regarded Sora through his lashes, hands shoved casually into his back pockets. _If you want to make up for tonight, Riku..._There he went again, managing a profound innocence even though his gaze was so painfully morose, and perhaps something more. Sora peered at him, awaiting an answer with his arms at his sides and the rush of traffic creating a flux of wind that gently rippled the clothing on both bodies. Silver strands of hair dancing limply along his temple and neck, Riku took a slow breath through his nose and let it out as a heavy sigh, acquiescing, "Yeah. Tomorrow."

Sora smiled. Riku eyed the smile, trying to analyze it but unable to—and he wondered chastely if this was what it felt like to fall for someone, or if he was jumping to romance when this was only what it felt like to _care _for someone. Like he'd know the difference.

"See you tomorrow, Riku."

"See you, candy boy."

Sora's smile exploded into a bright grin.

* * *

"Sora, are you lying to me?"

Flopped on his bed with the socked soles of his feet propped on a relatively bare space of wall and the cordless phone plastered to his cheek, a near-empty McDonald's Coke dangling from his free hand just an inch or two off the carpet, Sora's jaw dropped in offense. "No! Would I lie?"

"I just think you're way too happy for something like that to really have happened."

The playful skepticism in her voice was remarkably blatant. He didn't quite know how to respond.

"It did—I—"

"Is he a good cook?"

"Oh my God, _yeah_. I definitely would have eaten his chicken instead of my cheeseburger."

"That's so romantic. Like he's a secret chef. I bet for Valentine's Day he'd make—"

"Woah, Kairi, slow down." Clearly, Kairi had envisioned quite a few things about Riku already. Sora could almost see her sitting with Selphie and creating imaginary lives for the boys they fawned over, lives they molded from the fleeting encounters they managed to clutch during school hours. The only thing Sora had imagined so far was Riku not having an attitude. "What are you talking about?"

"You know, like in movies!"

"I don't watch—"

"Or novels."

"I don't—"

Sora tapped his toes angrily on the plaster just below the edge of a line of photographs taped up above his pillow. He didn't mean to sound so flustered; in fact, he didn't mean to _be _flustered at all, but it was all coming out like that and that was making his current state of perplexity even worse. Possibly because he didn't understand why he was getting so worked up about something so stupid. He was just trying to make a friend, but he'd never expected it to be this _strenuous—_

"So did you tell him about Roxas yet?"

Kairi's calling in life seemed to be making strenuous occasions even more difficult.

"..."

"You didn't tell him, did you?"

"I don't think—"

"You guys are friends, right?"

"Well, after tonight, I hope so—"

"You have to tell him at some point, Sora. It's not fair to him. _I'm_ you friend, too, and _I_ know. _Selphie_ knows. Your_ teachers_ know."

"They _have_ to know."

"You seem to care an awful lot about what he thinks of you."

Sora kicked his heels off the wall and let them drop limply onto his pillow. Setting the fountain drink down on the floor, he rolled over, curling up to face his wall as his brows knotted gently; troubled eyes drifted all along the pictures tacked beside his bed. Kairi was getting a little pushy. Riku was anything but easy to befriend, whether Sora was trying hard or not. But there was that tiny something in Riku's eyes that Sora kept catching a glimpse of, something that contradicted everything else in a way almost secretive. He shifted the telephone to the opposite ear, and decided his hush had gone on long enough.

"Kairi, I think...it'll come out when it's supposed to."

* * *

It was Tuesday, after soccer practice. There was a game on Saturday against a team that the high school had beaten consecutively for two seasons straight, so Traverse City High wasn't too apprehensive. It was that evening that Tidus fixed the dryer. The blond kid was like the living, breathing definition of _grease monkey_, with an emphasis on the _monkey_. There was nothing he couldn't figure out when it came to mechanical parts, but Riku assumed that was of the influence of Tidus's dad. It was the typical father-son passage of knowledge and skill, something like a family trade.

"_HEY_."

A bare heel assaulted Riku's shin. He sat on the floor of the hallway, against the wall opposite the laundry closet, and at the sudden beseeching foot, he blinked rapidly and looked away from the ceiling, down to Tidus's skeptical scowl. He had a smudge of black from the contents of Ichiro Hayate's old tool box on his cheek, and if he hadn't insisted on the hall light being turned on, he would have probably looked rather fearsome in the dancing shadows created by the television.

"...What?"

"Riku, you aren't listening to me, are you?"

"Do you need my help?"

"No."

"Then, no, I'm not really listening. Sorry, Tidus, but nuts and bolts just don't interest me."

Tidus eyed him warily, a tiny smile hiding at the corners of his mouth. He was pretty sure Riku hadn't found his statement as amusing as he had, something about immaturity and all, so he didn't mention it but instead went back to work, lying half in the laundry closet and half out.

"What are you thinking about so deeply that you can't even pay attention to my free repair lesson?"

"Nothing."

"You thinking about practice?"

"No."

"You did good out there, man."

"After a point."

Tidus glanced fleetingly at the boy slumped against the wall across from him. His head was tilted back, green eyes focused once more on the ceiling, distant and indecipherable. "'After a point'?" he implored slowly, even though he was well aware of what the other boy meant.

Riku shifted his gaze back down to peer at his friend cautiously. Pinched into a soft frown, he eased out, "Yeah. What?"

"Oh, I don't know, Riku. I think we all noticed you glancing back and forth from the sidelines."

Riku was very confident that his skin was either pale, pale white or hot, hot pink. Frown souring into a scowl now, he crossed his arms and spat, "What are you saying, Tidus?"

The grease monkey wriggled out from the compact space and sat up on his elbow, scratching at his temple and accidentally staining a few dirty-blond strands of hair a thick black, too. "Wakka just wants to know who was distracting you."

Ah. The truth was revealed.

"No one was distracting me. I had a lot on my mind."

"Bullshit, Riku. You were distracted. Who was it? I didn't see anyone new except for two freshman girls. Mm, but, then again, they come off and on. I _did_ see someone I _really _didn't expect, though."

Riku stared, lips parted gently and his brows knotted. At first he was a bit offended that Tidus should think he'd be distracted by two freshman girls, but then he tried to look innocent, tried to look nonchalant, even though he was anxious in a hand-caught-in-the-cookie-jar kind of way that he'd never really felt before, let alone imagined. And it was bittersweet. "Who?"

"That kid that you've been sitting with lately."

"That's ridiculous."

"Were you distracted because he was there?"

"_After a point_, I got focused and it was a good practice. Isn't that what matters?"

Tidus regarded Riku through the corner of his eye, both clever and reassuring as he slid back into position with the tools and machinery. "I'm almost done," he announced. "Hey, could I have something to drink?"

Riku grunted in response and climbed to his feet, bringing him a glass of water. Tidus thanked him in a muffled voice, reaching blindly for the toolbox before being redirected towards the drink by Riku's terse mumble. There was silence for a moment, just the sharp sounds of Tidus finishing up the job, and it took them ten minutes to clean up and make sure it was working before they were alone on Riku's stoop with the front door closed and the chilly evening surrounding them. The delayed end of summer was beginning to become consequential, and the weather was steadily declining into a crisp, wet autumn.

Tidus adjusted his jacket, glancing around for a moment, before sighing and nudging Riku's shoulder with his own. "Look, I don't know what's up with you lately, but I don't care as long as you're _alright_. You're..._alright_, aren't you?"

"I guess."

"You're too monotone sometimes."

"I know. Just like you're too dedicated sometimes."

"I'll see you tomorrow."

"Thanks for fixing the dryer."

"Any time, Riku."

"He's just a friend."

"...I didn't say he wasn't. I've just never known you to be distracted."

"It'll be the last time. You can tell Wakka that."

"You know, when someone says 'just a friend', it's usually—"

"Tidus, get off my property right now."

Tidus laughed, shaking his head. He descended the stoop, hands in the pockets of his jacket, and looked over his shoulder as he sidled down the driveway to where his bicycle lay in the grass. "See you tomorrow."

"Yeah, later," Riku replied over the squeak of the screen door opening. Returning inside the house and locking the front door behind him, he strode down the hall and into the bathroom, leaving his parents to their business with each other and the television in the living room. He switched on the light, closing the door as he began to undress for a shower.

_Too bad the dryer's fixed_, he considered as he ran a hand through his hair, glancing quickly at his reflection in the mirror and promptly leaving its premise for the shower. Tomorrow was Wednesday. Last Wednesday, he'd had to use the Laundromat. It had been a good chance to run into Sora—but it was gone now, just like that.

_Distractions, HAH. Tidus doesn't know anything. _

* * *

"I'll look for something to eat in the cabinet after this."

Riku looked to the brunet hurrying around the kitchen, tidying up for his guest, and he wanted to smile but didn't force it. Sora had cheered up remarkably from the dismal trek along the edge of the city, trundling past fast-food restaurants, bus stops, and other commercial conveniences, as though he were hiding an emotional fault line behind those dark blue eyes, one that slipped easily and rapidly. He'd even laughed at himself when it took him a struggle to open the door to the townhome. Perhaps it was the candy. Maybe it was laced with some kind of prescription anti-depressant.

_Okay, Riku, that's highly implausible and very, very STUPID. Rude, too. Thanks for the respectable humor, dad. He's probably nervous. I'm probably the first _guy _friend to his house in a long time._

Sora sensed Riku's eyes on him and his gaze flickered around through his lashes, meeting Riku's inquisitively. Riku was standing just off the kitchen linoleum, bag limp at his feet and looking rather misplaced. Sora wondered fleetingly as he turned his attention back to the dishes he was putting away if it was because Riku wasn't accustomed to watching someone else do the chores. It almost made him feel bad for him—but never in his life would he admit that aloud to the other boy.

"Do you want something to drink, Riku?" Sora glanced over his shoulder.

"No. I'm fine."

"I'll hurry, I promise."

"Like I'd have any reason to complain."

It took Sora a moment to realize the remark wasn't as solemn as Riku's face made it seem.

"Take your time, Sora," Riku urged, and pushed his backpack out of the middle of the floor. "Should I take my shoes off?"

"Ah—y-yeah. Heh. My mom hates that. Sorry."

"It's fine."

His Converse sat neatly beside a red pair on the threshold tile.

Glass- and silverware clinked as Sora rushed through the household task. Riku's hands slid comfortably into his pockets and he loitered along through the living room, examining how trim it was compared to his own. It was clear that someone paid close attention to how their house looked, how the magazines stayed stacked sloppily or not on the lower shelf of the end table, how despite the rings on the surface of the coffee table there were still coasters, how the blanket on the back of the couch was perfectly in the middle of the cushions but still crooked. Everything was in order, but somehow showed signs of life.

Riku found it comforting.

Broad windows stretching the length of the sofa gave a wide view of the rest of the complex; blinds were drawn on them but flipped open to allow in sunlight. Pictures were framed upon the white plaster, pictures of exotic beaches, classics of a café, and above the easy chair in the back corner of the room was a photograph of a little boy with tousled brown hair, dimpled cheeks, and a sparkling depth to his big blue eyes. The picture was taken on a beach and the boy was in the sand, a candid shot of a candid spirit.

Riku didn't notice the smile that was forming on his lips.

He passed by the television and peeked down the hall, peering into the more private spots of the house. He knew he shouldn't explore, but he couldn't help it. Checking over his shoulder to find Sora absolutely intent on raiding the cabinets for something worth becoming dinner, Riku took the chance and silently tread down the hallway. After all, he was just looking around. It wasn't a crime.

The walls in the minuscule corridor were crawling with more photographs. Riku's eyes graced them all, childishly observant. There were photos of a young woman, obviously professionally done; there were photos of a baby, then a toddler, then a grade-schooler, and quite a few of the same child laughing and hugging and sitting with the same young woman. If he had been more presumptuous, Riku would have pondered where the evidently vacant male figure was—but he understood that sometimes it was better to overlook things like that, and the notion was barely evaluated.

Riku dallied past the bathroom, past a closed door that he assumed to be Sora's mother's room, and stopped at the end of the hall where an open doorway led into what appeared to be Sora's personal space. He didn't go in, but he stood outside the threshold with his hands in his pockets, leaning in such a way so that it didn't seem too obvious that he was soaking it all up—that he was just looking around the house, nothing more.

The bedroom smelled like a mixture of Axe body spray and sweet skin that created that interestingly Sora scent, one that was all his own. At least, Riku was pretty confident that his smell couldn't be captured in a bottle, and if it could then it would probably be called something like _Candy Boy_.

Well, if _that_ wasn't an embarrassing thought process with a rather awkward ending.

Riku shifted to his other foot.

It was a typical fourteen-year-old boy's room, littered with clothes and books and other such items, the walls hidden behind posters (in this case they were of surfers as well as movies and bands) and the blinds never drawn. Lying seemingly forgotten in the corner was a pair of black Converse, high-tops. Against the far wall stood a bed, looking of course as though it hadn't been made properly in months, and beside it was a desk with a rather considerable array of books spread atop it, from text books to library books to beat-up paperback novels. There was a pile of photographs beside them, shiny little rectangular snapshots that Riku couldn't quite discern from the doorway. There were more of the similar photos admirably taped up above Sora's pillow, the ones that clearly meant the most to him. That was kind of cute, Riku supposed.

Of course, if he was considering Sora cute. Which he wasn't. The word _cute_ simply meant _charming, endearing, _or _sweet_.

On the desk, beside the bed, littered all around the room were candy wrappers of every worldly assortment; his eyes fell on a half-full bag of Swedish Fish lying on a cardboard box beside the door.

_Shit, how many of those does he go through?_

...Cardboard box?

Riku's brows knotted curiously. There were four or five boxes in the room, one beside the door, one shoved beneath the bed with God knew what else, and three pushed into the corner near his closet. Was he packing? Or unpacking?

Sora was seriously a confusing

_intriguing_

kid.

The partition doors of his closet were open. Riku's gaze shifted off the boxes and colorful wrappers dotting the room like cavity confetti, peering into the mouth of the closet. At first he couldn't see why something so suddenly deemed itself _wrong_ in his head, but his guilty scrutiny soon paid off as he realized what it was.

Inside the closet were two easily distinguishable sets of clothing.

On one half was a collection of colors, shirts hanging up in every shade of blue and red, hiding a few greens and whites, with even a yellow thrown in for balance. Beneath their hems, sitting on the closet floor, were folded pairs of faded jeans and shorts. On the other half, plainly separated by nearly half a foot of empty space, was a wide assortment of band T-shirts that swapped the variable colors on the opposite side for a relatively uniform black, gray, or white. Thrown in a pile beneath them were more pants, jeans ranging in levels of worn-in cloth, and was that flannel he saw in the mountain of denim?

Riku's gaze slid along to the corner of his eye and he peered dubiously down the hall at the brunet still rummaging through the cabinet. Sora had accumulated a rather large pile of boxed foods on the counter, all of which Riku didn't think would adequately form a meal. But Sora was trying and that was fine, he supposed. He looked back at the curiously mismatched closet, frowning unconsciously in thought.

His lips were pressed into a wan, impassive line, lashes lowered on meditative eyes. The excessive Swedish Fish, the unbalanced style in the closet, the pictures on the walls... Sora Kaimana just kept getting more and more intriguing.

"Riku?"

He almost jumped, caught red-handed; blinking at the boy in the kitchen, it took him a moment before he realized that Sora was holding up a box of blueberry pop-tarts.

"Are these okay?"

"_No_, Sora," Riku couldn't prevent an incredulous grunt from escaping his throat. "Pop-tarts aren't _dinner_. You don't... Just let me look."

Smiling faintly at Sora's embarrassed huff and glower and defensive retort—something about how pop-tarts were food and had calcium and if Riku couldn't find anything else they'd be eating pop-tarts and that was it or he'd pop _his_ tart, and other such grumbles beneath his breath—Riku strolled back down the hallway and opted not to dwell on the subject. He had a major hunch that there was more than what he was seeing.

This was Sora he was dealing with, after all. And that meant that whatever it was would be splendidly intriguing.

* * *

It was raining again. The sun was hidden behind smudges of pale gray, but it wasn't pouring yet; it was only drizzling, making everything slick and inhospitable. Luckily they weren't outside, where the world was soggy. They were inside the high school, on the second floor, standing by the windows that overlooked the basketball and tennis courts, and the reddish-pink track and dark green fields beyond those, all fenced-in because of those oh-so common ditchers.

It was lunch time—fish-sticks—but the second floor of the school was close to ethereal silence. Hushed voices echoed from further down the hallway, although most of the staff and student body were packed into the cafeteria or wandering the lower level with their lunches. The last of the slamming lockers around the corner had ceased, and they stood staring out at the rainy day with equally blank faces.

The toes of Sora's Converse shuffled against the tile, and eventually he managed to turn and look at Riku face-to-face, even though it took the other boy a few moments to realize he was being sought out. His eyes flickered to the corner of his gaze for a second before he pivoted fully and propped himself against the wall, hands slipped into his pockets.

"Candy boy," he obliged.

"I just...um... Thanks for making me dinner." Sora tried to suffice for his audible stumbling with a bright grin. "I really liked it." He paused, frowning—did that sound too clingy? "I mean, you can cook really well."

Riku blinked at each new sentence, appearing quite impatient with the flustered words, but at the compliment a faint smile bloomed, something that looked both fresh and yet awkward on his face. Sora felt it was more real than any other, so he didn't mind if it looked slightly sour. "Thanks," Riku mumbled.

_So did you tell him about Roxas yet?_

Sora could feel his own smile fading gently. He wished Kairi would get the hell out of his mind, but her words had a scary way of staying in there sometimes. Or perhaps he was just a bit frightened because his conscience's voice was that of a crazy freshman girl.

"Is that all you wanted to say?" Riku was looking at him curiously, an amused half-smirk tugging up the right corner of his mouth at the prospect of Sora pulling him away from the rest of the cafeteria just to thank him for dinner when they were sitting together for lunch anyway. Sora swallowed, brows furrowing as he struggled for some kind of composure.

"Well, uh, no—I just—it gets loud, you know? And...well, I don't think microwave dinners will ever be the same." He laughed, anxiously, because it was very much the truth. Riku's smirk broadened.

"So you want me to be your personal chef, is that it?"

"...I guess you could say it like that."

Riku chuckled. Sora's jaw dropped, aghast.

"Are you laughing at me?"

"A little. I've just never had anyone _ask_ me to cook for them regularly."

"You do it for your parents!"

"They don't _ask_ me."

"Well, don't think I _need_ you. I've survived just fine without you and I can do it again if—"

"Sora, calm down. I don't really mind, but it won't be an everyday thing."

Sora's brows furrowed further in disappointment, peering at Riku expectantly. "What do you mean?"

"I'll be able to go home with you after school when my dad works late shifts, and other than that, soccer ends in November. I'm sure you know that."

Sora was quite sure that his face was as red as a Swedish Fish as he deadpanned, stomach knotting up guiltily. Trying to blink away his stupefaction, he cast the taller boy a covert glance from below his lashes. "Who said you were going to go home with _me_?" he countered, but it wasn't serious in the least—he couldn't keep the impish smile from breaking across his face, ruining the act.

Riku regarded him for a moment, seemingly struck dumb, but he finally regained the ability to speak albeit with his typical wit momentarily alleviated, and husked out, "You're a funny kid, candy boy."

"I have a name. It's Sora. S-O-R-A."

"You know, Sora, personal chefs are usually hired to go to the client's house and cook for them, so if you're really having a problem with me coming over, I don't have to—"

Sora cocked his head back and laughed his paralyzing laugh, cutting off Riku's voice without even realizing he'd done it. Riku shifted his weight to the opposite foot, watching as Sora rubbed at a spot just above his ear absently, sighing softly as his mirth subsided. Then bright cobalt eyes settled on the sophomore, heavy and profound, and Riku didn't quite know if he was supposed to be reacting or not, so he stayed silent and stared, mouth pressed into a firm line.

A moment passed and Sora's smile faded away a bit more as he tilted his head, scrutinizing the other boy through slit eyes. He opened his mouth but instead of _Then I guess you need to know about Roxas_, what came out was a smooth, "Let me give you my number, okay?"

Inside, Riku's heart gave an unexpected leap. Outside, he clung to his nonchalance, licked his lips, and mumbled, "Why?"

Sora frowned as though Riku was really incapable of understanding. "Because you're my friend, not my personal chef," he replied quietly, and despite the fact that he hadn't mentioned Roxas, he still felt accomplished because Riku was pulling a pen out of his backpack and handing it over to him, spreading out his palm as a substitute for paper, looking at him with sea-green eyes peeking out from between silver strands of hair in a fashion close to shyness.

"Is this your house number?"

_Riku Hayate, shy? Couldn't be._ Sora leered.

"Of course, Riku. What else would I have? Now give me yours, so I know who's calling."

"Yeah."

Sora decided that he was in a relatively awesome mood as soon as the seven digits were scrawled across his wrist.

* * *

The doorknob was jammed again. He struggled with it for what seemed like eternities in the lobby, glancing over his shoulder, discomfited, at the obnoxious floor manager who sat at his desk and watched as he did every time he returned during his particular shift. Stumbling through the threshold as the door finally opened, once more looking over his shoulder at the lobby desk, this time with a scowl as he promptly slammed the door shut again, he flipped both locks, dropped his bag, and checked his wrist to make sure the ballpoint ink hadn't been smudged during his battle with the door. Or during P.E., or on his way home for that matter.

It was still there.

All seven digits.

"Sora, come here—"

He almost jumped. He'd almost forgotten she was home today. Abandoning his bag at the doorway, he flew through the living room and down the hall, swinging into his mother's room with a big smile on his face, mouth opening to greet her but no words escaping. Instead, he paused, gaze fluttering around and trailing after the woman as she rushed around the room. Yuuko Kaimana was fresh out of the shower, light brown hair still damp and unstyled and in her way; she pushed it out of her eyes and looked to her son apologetically, squatting down at the floor of her closet in nothing but a bra and jeans, digging for her shoes. There was a sweater lying next to her purse, a bag large enough to hold her extra clothes as well as other necessities.

"Mom," Sora murmured, noticeably deflating in the threshold, "I thought you were off tonight."

"I thought so, too, but I got called in."

"Why? I thought we were going to watch a movie tonight and—"

"Sora, sometimes things don't work out how you want."

His gentle frown immediately curdled into a cold glance from the corner of his eyes, lips pursed into a tight line. He leaned out of the doorway and into the hallway, fingers curled on the wood of the door frame to hold him in place. "Okay," Sora replied tersely, then turned, walking back out to the living room. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught his mother standing up with her shoes in her hands, watching as he left as though she wanted to say something more. But she said nothing.

She said nothing until he had taken off his shoes, tossed his bag at the foot of his bed, and had sprawled atop it with a book, cheek on the blankets and socked feet on the pillow—and when she did say something she had tugged on her sweater and was hurrying for the door but took a moment to lean against her son's bedroom threshold and spit out:

"Okay, I'm out of here. Really, Sora, I'm sorry. I promise that we'll watch something another time. Don't stay up too late, don't do anything I wouldn't allow, and you know what to do for dinner."

"Yup." Sora turned the page, free arm dangling off the edge of the mattress. His mother began to leave, but tugged herself back by the doorknob, sweater swinging substantially on the waist hidden beneath with the abrupt jerk of her torso.

"I forgot to tell you that your therapist called. He wants to see you next Thursday afternoon instead of Monday."

"That's great."

Dark blue eyes rolled upwards to the ceiling, seeking out help from higher authorities but not finding any answers. Sighing heavily, the woman squeezed her eyes shut and scrabbled for some patience. Lashes lifting slowly, Mrs. Kaimana gave the fourteen-year-old spread plaintively on his bed a soft smile and eased out, "I love you, sugar. I'll see you in the morning. No hard feelings?"

"No hard feelings," he replied, although it was highly unbelievable. "Love you, too, mom."

He waited for the door to slam shut, and then Sora slapped the paperback beneath his nose closed, shoved it to the floor, and buried into the blankets below his head. It was too bad it was Thursday and that meant Riku was tied up at soccer practice, or he really would have called. Looked like he was stuck with a different chef tonight—good old Chef Boyardee. You could always rely on that.

* * *

**A/N: Whew. That was a lot to fit into one chapter. **


	4. Faith and Desire

_**Candy Boy**_

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the amazing franchise © Disney and Square Enix; everything else © their rightful owners. **

**Ratings/Warnings: M—profanity, graphic themes, AU **

* * *

_Chapter Four_

* * *

The day that Riku really, honestly comprehended his affection—

Oh, fuck complicated words.

The day that Riku really, honestly comprehended that he'd fallen, not yet head over heels but a slight trip-up of the feet complete with pinwheeling arms and total loss of balance, for Sora Kaimana was the Friday that he wore a navy-blue long-sleeved shirt, the thin cotton kind with the hood on the back that didn't yet classify as a sweatshirt. He wore it with baggy, faded cover-alls that had been shredded into shorts at the knees, the front bib ripped away just above the waist loops to allow a passage for his belt and the back bib hanging down from just below his tailbone, straps dangling to mid-calf like abandoned suspenders. Past his tan shins that were covered in goose-bumps because of the gentle atmospheric dip into the sixties (the following Sunday marked the close of the month of October), he wore his treasured red Converse.

Sora stood on the curb with his bag beside him, hands on his hips in a fashion not quite qualifying as impatient, absently watching the buses consume hordes of students as he chewed what Riku knew for a fact was a Swedish Fish.

It was what the two had deemed a Chef Riku day. Riku's dad worked the later shift at the local Fred Meyer, meaning he was tied up from three P.M. to well after nine, leaving enough hours unsupervised for a dinner and some valuable kicking-it time.

Sora greeted him with something short of surprise, regained a cool composure, grinned, scooped up his satchel bag, and said, "Hey, Riku."

Riku didn't know what it was that had so abruptly detonated in his face, but it was contagious in a good way and spreading fast and he had to quarantine it immediately before he would be unable to fight the symptoms. Suddenly he couldn't even look at Sora, could only strut beside him as he talked—told him about how his mom had given him money to go to the store so they could have something other than pop-tarts for dinner this time, his words meant to be wielded as sarcasm even though Riku recognized the enthused undertones—because if he looked, the strange lack of self control he was feeling would spiral into impulsion, and he'd act on his cravings before he could even begin to evaluate boundaries and regrets.

He wanted to hug Sora. Just hug him tight and feel the warmth of his body, memorize the shape of it, every lithe slope and lean muscle. Wanted to play with his messy brown hair, to brush it from his face and run the unruly layers through his fingertips—he wondered how soft it was. He wanted to smell Sora's skin because he was confident it would smell like that imaginary fragrance _Candy Boy_, and maybe even sweeter. Wanted to lace fingers with him and just burn the touch into his flesh, the interlocking of hot, soft digits. To stare into those endless blue eyes, to read every emotion and every thought, to get absolutely lost in them so maybe Sora would have to kiss him to break the charm and salvage his soul.

Riku almost stumbled on the toes of his All-Stars as he stopped walking abruptly and rubbed at his face, begging for his mind to clear again. _Stupid, stupid, stupid—I can NOT believe I'm—_

"Are you alright, Riku?"

And of _course_ Sora would ask when Riku didn't _want_ him to ask.

"I'm fine."

"If you say so. Hey, look, there's Metropolitan Market. We'll stop and get some things for dinner. I promise it will be quick—like, two seconds."

Riku blinked his gaze back over to the brunette as they hopped the curb into the grocery store's parking lot. Sora was grinning in invitation, an impish brow-waggling expression that was so innocuous that it looked goofy. Riku snorted into a chuckle.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"I only have ten dollars."

"That's enough."

* * *

The unexplainable illness plaguing Riku's conscience didn't abate. Every little movement, every little sound, every little face, and every unintentional brush was intensified. He noticed it all. He couldn't shake it—and, guiltily, he didn't want to.

It was intriguing him, over and over.

Sora complained. He complained because Riku was pointing out the vegetables as they walked past their respective aisle, naming them off like Sora had never even heard of them before. Which, honestly enough, he hadn't heard of some—what on earth were scallions?

"You know, Riku, there are peas in our freezer." Sora was glowering, arms crossed as he trudged along behind the taller boy. He had the money clenched in his fist and was curiously folding it and unfolding it repeatedly in his knuckles, unaware of the blue eyes observing such.

"Oh, really?" Riku didn't care about peas.

"Yes."

"When were they bought?"

Oh, like he knew that! "I don't know, Riku... My mom probably—"

"Have they been opened?"

"No—"

"Then they're most likely there because you don't have an ice pack."

"_Riku_! You're a jerk!"

Riku had smiled at that. A half-smile, but a smile all the same. And despite Sora's flustered, defensive scowl, he could see the smile in the cobalt of his irises when he snuck a glance in. Just one glance, though, because too many could quite possibly lead to a few boxes of pasta being knocked off the shelf as something probably a little socially unacceptable occurred in the middle of the shopping aisle.

But he couldn't do that. Yet, he hoped. And then Riku really enforced a NO-THINKING regime on his mind, because all his thoughts were endangering his casual pretense.

* * *

His favorite dinner was his mother's spaghetti. It had been a long while since she'd made it; the meal was generally an all-day process for the meat sauce alone. Sora could live off the leftovers for weeks on end after that first serving, but maybe it was only so filling because every time he ate it, his mother was there and eating it with him.

This time, however, Riku was making spaghetti.

Sora was well aware that Riku's spaghetti was much different from his mom's, but it was undeniably a new side of scrumptious. The kitchen reeked of little Italy, pungent with the fresh aroma of oregano, garlic, and tomato sauce. He knew he probably seemed very uncivilized, twirling and slurping and smacking his way through the pasta and garlic bread, but he couldn't have cared less. Instead of his mother sitting across the table with a glass of iced tea and her legs tucked up beneath her there was a green-eyed sophomore neatly spinning spaghetti on his fork with one hand readied at his jawline to push back strands of hair that strayed towards his mouth and dangerously close to a mess of sauce, and somehow that was an equal level of perfection.

Sora didn't want parmesan.

Riku's sauce had been parmesaned to the point of becoming pink.

Sora ate the inside of his bread by itself, then shoveled up the noodles with the residual crust.

Riku mopped up sauce with his garlic bread as intact as it had been when he'd put it on his plate.

Sora drank Coke.

Riku drank water.

And when his fork clattered limply to the rim of his empty plate, Sora leaned back in his chair, stretched out his legs, held his head in his hands as if unable to maintain the culinary ecstasy, and breathed out in a heavy sigh, "That was pretty good."

Riku perked into a crooked little smile, barely there but still present. It warmed Sora up from the inside out, and he laced his hands in his lap, settling back into his chair and watching as his personal chef finished off his last three bites—and wondering why in the world he'd been so afraid to become his friend in the first place. Hanging out with Riku was just all-around comfortable, leaving him in awe of how the simplest things could tickle him so much. It was a wonderfully confusing stirring-up inside, something that felt like chaos but at the same time like peace.

"Riku..." Sora began, but trailed off as the other boy glanced to him in response; it was just a mere flick of his eyes, something insignificant but still oh-so powerful. Sora fidgeted slightly, leaning forward upon his elbows. Suddenly he didn't know how he felt. He felt nervous and content all at once, and yet somehow he felt like there was more to this, that there was more to Riku's visits than just dinner and a good laugh or two. Something was there but it was hiding itself, and boy, was it hard to understand something you couldn't see.

"What?" Riku coaxed, but he wasn't impatient in the least. He set his silverware down, pushed his plate to the side, and folded his arms on the surface of the table, giving Sora all the time in the world to continue.

Which, for some reason, he really needed.

Sora blinked. He licked his lips and tapped his fingertips on the table. What was it he had been about to say? Oh, yeah. The way that Riku's hair was moving—naturally or on his knuckles, giving sneak peeks of the slender neck and jawline latent beyond, the way it fell and framed his face and contrasted so gently with his pale skin and sea-green eyes—had made Sora think of...

"Riku, I think you should get your ears pierced."

Riku almost sputtered on his occurring sip of water.

Sora frowned. It wasn't _that _ridiculous of a suggestion, was it?

Riku coughed. "Why do you say that?"

"I just think it would look nice."

"Nice?"

"Yeah. I mean, not a stud...but maybe some tiny silver rings."

Riku regarded the brunette mordantly, unconsciously tossing his head to rid his gaze of the hair falling along his temple and into his eyesight. It was as absent as shoving one's hands into one's pockets, but Sora noticed it infallibly. "So," Riku teased, "when you say it would look nice, do you mean badass nice or gay nice?"

"...Hunh?"

Riku's lips twisted into a wry little smirk. "Well, I mean, think about it—" And he didn't have to finish because Sora _did_ think about it, and he interrupted irascibly:

"HEY! I'm being honest here! Riku, come on—that's mean—I would never—you wouldn't look _gay—_just because you have long hair?"

Sora stopped rambling and slouched down a bit lower, settling into a rather dark stare that was focused on the boy across the table, the boy across the table currently laughing whole-heartedly below his breath, and his dark stare promised all sorts of harm, whether it be bodily or mentally or socially or whatever else he could muster the strength to do because he _hadn't_ meant something like that, and he'd _never_ say something like that anyway, and how the hell could Riku get so much entertainment out of what he said when he wasn't even trying to be funny?

"Look," he attempted in hopes of mending the awkwardness, even though it was mainly on his half of the table, "I don't think you'd look gay. I don't think you'd look badass, either. I think you'd look..." _Dammit, Kairi. I don't know what else to say! _"...smooth."

And despite the fact that he'd braced himself for the word to be gross on his tongue, it came out tenderly, unexpectedly effortless. Sora's brows furrowed.

"Smooth?" Riku reiterated skeptically.

"Yes. I mean, I'm not saying you _need_ piercings, but I think it would—" Sora cut off and pressed his lips together in a defiant line, glaring across the table.

Riku blinked. He waited a few seconds, but when Sora didn't budge, he prompted warily, "...You think it would what?"

"No, I can't say that."

"Why not?"

"I just...I can't say that...it sounds horrible. I'll hate myself if I say it."

"What do you—"

"Well, I wouldn't hate myself, but you get the point."

"Sora, what could you possibly say that you'd hate yourself for?"

Sora shifted. He continued his pinched, flustered glower for a moment longer before slumping down with a slow breath and easing out, "I think it would complete your look."

Riku blinked again, at first because he wasn't sure why that was such a horrible thing to say, but then he grinned lightly because he understood why Sora would have been apprehensive to make that comment about another person's appearance. Especially about the particular subject they were presently discussing. Riku didn't say anything; he only grinned, knowing that what Sora was saying was entirely good-natured and nothing else.

Sora suddenly slid out of his seat and before Riku knew it, he was stooping down next to where he still sat in his chair, brushing hair away from the side of his face and holding it behind his ear with two fingers. His touch was warm and gentle, something short of coy but still casual.

"Not on the cartilage," Sora advised, "but down here." He pointed with his free hand. "I'd say two or three rings in this ear, only because I don't think you should pierce both."

He was so close. He picked up on the fresh, clean scent of Riku's skin, and the sharpness of his T-shirt's TAG/detergent smell. Sora blinked a few times, pretending that he was examining the pale lobe of Riku's ear, but in reality he was considering how he loved Riku's smell—er, no, he was wondering why he hadn't pulled back yet. Maybe he was waiting for Riku's answer. Yeah, that was it. He was awaiting Riku's opinion. Because, after all, it _was_ Riku's ear they were targeting. And who knew if his jackass dad would approve of piercings on a boy, anyway?

Riku was staring at him. Maybe _that_ was why he wasn't moving. Riku was staring and he was silent and there was something happening in his eyes, something happening so fast that Sora couldn't follow it. He tried; he stared right back and he frowned, trying to catch at least a glimpse of one course of emotion, but before he could, he felt something soft and cool dusting his cheek.

From the moment Sora pushed his hair back and finished explaining his vision of completion to the moment everything was shot to hell, a total of only seven seconds had passed.

Riku craned upwards, one clammy hand gripping the back of his chair for support and the other tentatively touching Sora's cheek, and as he moved forward, slowly climbing up to his feet, he leaned in with only one goal in mind.

_This is different than just caring, isn't it? It has to be. I don't know what it is, but I want to. I want to so bad, and maybe after I do, I'll figure it out._

He thought that maybe he'd heard thunder as he eased in to kiss Sora, thunder in the far, far distant that didn't threaten his walk home at all, but he decided that it was probably just a car starting up somewhere outside in the surrounding parking lots and just concentrated on the intriguing brunette in front of him and that one goal.

Sora tensed up.

He looked quickly to the table. Their plates were still there. They needed to be loaded into the dishwasher along with the other cooking utensils.

He looked back to—

It's hard to remember that what a person believes they're seeing may not be what they're truly seeing at all. They say that your eyes can play tricks on you, but is it possible that it's your _mind's _eye that is playing the tricks? What the optical nerves deliver to the brain is not what defines sight; the brain has to evaluate the neurological data and thusly configure what a person is seeing, creating a thin line between illusion and actuality.

It's really unfair when you think about it.

For a split-second, there was a hand on his cheek, and his own fingers were becoming entangled in the hair of the person advancing and smothering all his well-established securities. His breath hitched into his throat and his mouth was open, so why wasn't anything coming out but those stupid little grunts? He could see him, leaning in on him like a predator to its prey—he could see the choppy brown hair and the midnight blue, lifeless eyes, locked on to him greedily. He was grinning, a big toothy shark's grin, and after that split-second, Sora squeezed his eyes shut and reopened them because he knew that all of that had to be, just _had to be_, a trick of his mind's eye. All of his rational thought assured him that it was nothing but a day-nightmare because he was gone, he was gonegonegone and it was against all the rules of reality for him to be leaning in on him at that exact moment in time.

And Sora was right.

Because when he gasped and opened his eyes, it was just Riku again, a few inches closer and still testing his boundaries. Sora wondered if it felt like eternities were exploding to him, too, but instead he realized that he suddenly felt very sick to his stomach and he whipped his face away just as Riku's head ducked forward. He sucked in another breath as he felt a nose awkwardly bumping into the skin behind his ear, and that was when he staggered away, arms shooting up to hide his face from the other boy.

"_No_," Sora managed as he pulled away, almost tripping on his own two feet. "No, stop—DON'T—" He knew—oh, sure, he knew—it was just a reaction to what he'd _thought_ he'd seen, not what had actually been happening, but he couldn't handle both the past and the present at the same time. Woah, hold on, that was one hell of an emotional circuit overload.

Whatever it had been that Sora had been marveling over as they ate crashed and burned. It teetered off balance for a taunting moment, then went plummeting to the ground and shattered. There was an abrupt silence as Sora stood stock-still, cautiously lowering his arms to gawk at Riku in dismay, and Riku stood at his chair with his eyes wide and face draining of color as every level of regret and embarrassment assailed him.

"I..."

Sora was panting. His shoulders were heaving with the intensity of his breaths, and Riku took that as a sign that it was best if he left. Pronto. Grabbing his backpack from the doorway, he shoved his feet into his Converse and didn't even bother to tie them, just rushed out the door and promptly out of the lobby.

He stopped at the curb outside the building to lace up his shoes. He figured he should be disappointed, or mad, or even very frightened, but Riku really only felt numb. And cold. The temperature had dropped again, hadn't it?

Inside the first-floor townhome, Sora shivered and sank down onto the couch.

* * *

She said hello to the midnight lobbyman as she unlocked her front door, bag hooked on her shoulder and shoes dangling from her free hand. Her feet were killing her. The lobby was silent as it normally was at this hour, a heavy silence, an eerie silence, the silence of the whole world asleep while its nocturnal life began to awaken or wind down.

All she wanted was to get inside, drop all her things to her bedroom floor, and take a scalding shower to soothe her sore muscles and wash away the night. The lights were off in the house and she tried to stay quiet as she closed and locked the door behind her so that she wouldn't wake her son up, even though he slept like a log anyway and how someone fell asleep with the television on, she didn't know—

But the house was completely quiet.

Yuuko Kaimana set her bag down at her bare, aching feet and stretched her arm out, blindly searching the wall beside the door for the light switch. Locating it, she fumbled with it for a moment before managing to flip it on—and nearly screamed when the light revealed the boy curled up in the easy chair a few feet away from her. His unannounced presence startled her enough for her to drop her shoes to the tile of the threshold, letting out a squeaky little breath that very well could have been the beginnings of a shriek.

"Sugar...?" Yuuko eased out, tucking loose hair behind her ear and moving towards the corner of the room with a caution she excused for courtesy. She didn't want to wake him if he had fallen asleep there.

Which he hadn't. She could have guessed as much. The woman reached out to stroke hair out of her son's face, frowning as one cold, dark blue eye rolled around to peer at her, optics teeming with thoughts but somehow still empty.

It had been a while. She had actually thought that maybe all their hard work was paying off.

"Sora..." she murmured softly, fingertips trailing along his cheek as she crouched down in front of him. He stared at her and she stared back, despondently, waiting for him to _move_ for Christ's sake, just _move_. He was tucked up like nothing at all, curled in on himself within the cushions of the black easy chair. Impassive, his eyes flicked up and down, scrutinizing her silently. Her hair was messy, the light brown locks coming loose from the half-back she'd sloppily slammed up on the way home, her make-up looking as though it wanted to come off her face, smudged and faded and making her look unbearably burned out. She wore the same high-waisted bluejeans and large sweater, but he knew she had changed hastily in the bathroom before so much as touching the car keys. That one was a given. She never wore her work clothes in the house, not even her waiting uniform.

Sora's gaze fluttered away from his mother's furrowed brows and out the window. It had begun raining a few hours before and the nighttime shower was becoming a nighttime drizzle. Lightning flashed and he saw it through the drawn blinds. He wondered how late it was, and if Riku had gotten home before the storm hit.

"Sora, talk to me."

His mother cupped his face in her hands and forced him to look at her again. She knew what was going through his mind and she knew what would follow, because she knew this process like the back of her hand but it _still_ frightened her. It frightened her every time.

Yuuko cradled him as best she could at the awkward angle, holding him to her chest and rocking him to and fro. The unbalanced sway of the rest of him slumped at an angle from the chair cushions smashed his nose into her neck and he wrinkled it up to avoid a sneeze. She stunk. She reeked of cigarettes, sweat, and the bittersweet tang of drinks and cheap colognes. He supposed the stench was probably a natural part of her skin by now, that no amount of perfume and body soap could get rid of it. She got credit for effort, though.

Sora stayed limp for a moment, but his wrists soon twitched upwards and his fingers fisted gently in her sweater, and then he started to cry.

* * *

**A/N: It will all be explained. I promise. You just have to wait until Monday. -wink.-**


	5. This Is Who We Are

_**Candy Boy**_

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the amazing franchise © Disney and Square Enix; everything else © their rightful owners. **

**Ratings/Warnings: M—profanity, graphic themes, AU **

* * *

_Chapter Five_

* * *

The weekend passed with horrible austerity. He didn't fall steadily asleep until three in the morning on Friday night, tossing and turning as his thoughts nibbled ominously at his mind, and as he drifted they nibbled ominously at his conscience, bothering him even when he wasn't fully awake. He felt like he'd lost something that he hadn't even acknowledged, lying with his face buried in his pillow and the noises long since stopped in the room next to his. Riku was completely cognizant as the storm began and then faded away, and the despair reminded him of a similar night a few weeks ago.

Somehow, this was worse. _Way _worse.

Saturday there had been a soccer game against Bastion High, a school that had, strangely enough, lost a good number of its potential student body to their rival Traverse City and always used that trivial indiscretion as motivation. By the time the coach pulled him out of the game, Riku had already gotten numerous grass stains, missed several passes, and nearly gotten hit in the head with the ball. "_Riku_," the coach had howled after the first forty minutes, and the sophomore didn't even require a further explanation. He trudged off the field and sat down on the bench, and as the rest of his team avoided him, not out of disdain but out of reverence (even though this "reverence" was because he wasn't playing right and that meant he _must _be sick, and if he wasn't playing right because he was sick, it _must _be a painful, contagious illness that they should be wary of for risk of hindering their own abilities and the teams' victory—or loss at this point), he looked over his shoulder and searched the sidelines for a familiar face that had been there a few times before.

When he didn't find it, he hung his head and stayed like that for the second half of the game.

They lost, anyway.

Sunday, he sat on the couch with his dad to his right and his mom to his left and tried to watch a few television programs with them, but the sitcoms seemed to hold no humor whatsoever and the movies his mother turned on only served to make him start thinking about that profound sense of loss again, that one he couldn't seem to place. And after a while he gawked at the telephone, struggling with the decision to call the number he'd recently been given or not (and hoping that maybe he would be the one to get a call instead). His mother proved that she knew him better than he supposed she did as the day dragged along and she continuously questioned if he was okay or not, at one point even patting around his face in search of a fever because "_it was November now and that meant flu and pneumonia and colds_".

Tidus called, to ask him if he was alright. Again. And Riku could have sworn that he heard the unremittingly cloying screech of a certain Yuffie in the background, bickering about something with someone else, so to rescue his sense of hearing, he insisted into the receiver that just because he played a bad game it didn't mean something was wrong. But he could tell that Tidus knew he was lying in that extraordinarily enlightened way of his. _You're just not content with anything, are you, Riku?_

A short time later he went to bed but didn't go to sleep. He rolled around restlessly, worrying about things that he claimed were _stupid, stupid, _and _more stupid_, but things that still upset him all the same.

He liked Sora. _That _way.

And if Sora didn't, a friendship was just as good.

Well, maybe not _just as good_, but acceptable. An explanation for rejection would suffice, too.

Monday, he was excruciatingly anxious until the lunch bell rang. Lessons and discussions went swiftly in one ear and out the other for the first four classes of the day, toes tapping on the linoleum and fingers threaded behind his neck, eyes focused on an unimportant corner of the room and his mind entirely elsewhere. There was only one thing on his mind, and that was the one thing he needed to keep thinking about because it made his chest ache and his throat tight, and a number of other symptoms that were somehow worse than before, and all those little reminders would ensure him that he would definitely do that one thing on his mind.

Riku was determined not to let this slip through his fingers. He wasn't like that.

* * *

Kairi squeaked as a careful poke was jabbed into her ribs. The boy beside her, keeping his gaze low, inconspicuously motioned off across the way with his plastic fork, and a few droplets of ramen broth (albeit lukewarm) splattered on the tabletop. "Kairi—do you know him?"

She blinked, cheek propped in her palm and her nails tapping the apple of her cheek. The polish was wearing away; she needed to repaint them. Flicking her gaze in the direction his fork was waving, she blinked again, but this time in something very short of panic.

"Hunh? Him? No."

"Liar."

Kairi and Roxas rolled nearly exact glances of interrupted skepticism at Selphie. She blinked emptily, brows risen as if challenging any opposition from her fellow friends.

Roxas's eyes shifted to meet Kairi's. He rose his brows in a similar fashion, but one much less conceited. Kairi sent Selphie a threatening glimpse, her lower jaw jutted out in a rather un-feminine frown, before looking back to Roxas through her lashes, disgruntled. Selphie was once again cut out of the conversation as she always was on these days; she huffed, turning back to the essay she was rushing to finish before the next class period.

"I'm just asking," the boy mumbled as he shoved his fork back into the cup of noodles, stirring the contents and scooping up another soggy bite, "because he keeps looking over here. Who is he?"

"He's _Riku_," Selphie butted in again, but when both Roxas and Kairi shot her more glares of distaste, they found her head bowed and her pencil moving, the eraser charms dancing away at her knuckles.

Kairi chewed on the inside of her lower lip anxiously, staring at Selphie even as Roxas sought out an explanation and slurped up another forkful of ramen. She didn't know what to say. At all. She couldn't even come up with a good fib. How in the world was she supposed to explain Riku to Roxas after all those phone calls between she and Sora? He wouldn't understand those. He wouldn't understand Sora's uncertainty—hell, Sora didn't even seem to understand his uncertainty. She didn't even think _Riku_ understood what was going on, and in a way that was cute but this was not a moment that called for _cute_. This was a moment that called for Kairi's aid, her cleverness, her subtle way of aligning things up correctly for other people when they were unable to themselves.

Shit, she should start charging fees for this.

"Ahh..." Kairi licked her lips and flicked her gaze up to meet Roxas's. "He's Riku Hayate. He's a sophomore. He's—"

"Hot," Selphie simpered primly at the other girl as she completed the sentence for her. Kairi glared. She glared as hard as she was physically capable of. Roxas rolled his eyes and ate another bite of ramen.

Kairi tried again. "He's a soccer player."

"Oh," Roxas grunted absently, tucking an ankle up beneath the opposite thigh and stirring his noodles as he swallowed his current mouthful.

The volume of the congregation of students was relatively lower than normal; it always was on a Monday, that horribly dragging day that proved that the weekend did indeed have an end, forcing a person back into the week schedule even though no one would be serious until Wednesday, and the following day would only set the descent into weekend mania rolling again. The cafeteria was still noisy and it was still crowded and it smelled like spaghetti and that amorphous, uniform scent of something inedible but completely unique to lunchrooms everywhere, and it took Riku ten of the allotted twenty-five minutes to finally stop avoiding even the quickest glance at the table a few yards away. Just bowing his head and poking at his food, he barely comprehended the conversations going on around him, and after Yuffie asked him who had pissed in his Red Bull that morning, Riku merely shifted on the bench, dropped his fork, and sighed, "I'm just in a bad mood today."

He took the general stunned silence that followed as leeway to ask Cloud to watch his backpack and force his limbs into motion. He skirted the table, ignoring the inquiries of where he was going—Tidus talking around a cream-filled donut, Wakka with his husky accent, Yuffie with a breathless chirp. They could all just fucking watch and find out, like they seemed to do anyway.

Riku waited for a few teachers to pass through the cafeteria alley, shoved his hands into his pockets, and strode across the tile and approached the lunch table that had so unexpectedly changed his life (without his awareness either) with one string of thought marqueeing through the cloud of anxiety: _Just ask him to come with you upstairs like he did on Thursday, and that's all you have to do...smile at him, even...if you smile then he _has_ to know you're being serious, so just apologize, tell him you still want to be his friend—_

"Hey, he's coming over here," Roxas announced blandly. To his right, Selphie uttered a small gasp and hurriedly tried to organize her papers, as though her process of bullshitting an essay would impress the advancing hottie.

Kairi's eyes widened. Roxas peered at her sideways, from the corner of his eye, prodding and stirring at his noodles. She was reacting awfully strange about this Riku guy, which most likely meant she was keeping some information from him. No matter, though, because he'd definitely get it out of her. She told him everything.

"Riku..." Roxas tested the name on the tip of his tongue, rolling his eyes around to look up at the ceiling as he considered the way it felt in his mouth, dusting off his lips. "It's so familiar."

"I bet it is," Kairi mumbled, very near shrinking all the way to the disgusting linoleum floor. She gawked as Riku drew nearer, swinging first one leg and then the other over the bench and casually easing down to sit at their table while the occupants remaining at his eventually resumed a normal level of chatter. At first Riku looked at her, then at Roxas, at Selphie with incredible force of will, and then returned his attention to Kairi.

"Hi, Riku," she peeped, and she never would have expected to be this hesitant when speaking with him. Maybe under certain circumstances, but she knew by now that those circumstances were nothing but fantasy to a high percentage of the students at the high school.

"Hi." Riku frowned. He flicked his gaze to the other boy at the table, where it lingered for a moment, and then back to the girl with the bright green bobby pins in her hair. "...Can I, um, talk to him? Alone, I mean?"

"I don't think that's a good idea," Kairi insisted, and her voice came out barely above a whisper. She could feel Roxas directing his attention to the boy with the long hair, perplexed. This was not good. _Not good _at all. If she'd known that they were this freaking involved—

"You don't understand." Riku sounded like he was getting angry, but his ice-blue eyes only got more and more sad. Kairi wanted to grab him by the shoulders and (whilst feeling how lean and developed they were) shake him, get right into his face and tell him _No, YOU are the one who doesn't understand!_

But she didn't. Instead, Kairi's mouth hung gently slack and she regarded Riku through her lashes silently, as if evaluating his sincerity. Then her pastel-pink lips pressed into a tight line and she pushed off the bench, peering at the sophomore with an almost grumpy frown—a delicate twist and a dainty pucker of her mouth with a glance cast at him from the corner of her eyes in something like a lofty warning. This was Sora's fault, not hers, and so he could deal with the consequences while she would _obviously_ have to deal with the aftermath.

"Fine," she conceded brusquely. "Come on, Selphie. Let's go." The brunette girl followed her with a tight scoff and the rustle of papers, leaving the two boys generally alone on the left half of the lunch table. Roxas watched dubiously as his friend walked away, leaving her bag on the bench beside him. He blinked his gaze to Riku for a second, sizing up the situation, and then quickly redirected it to Kairi, who was all smiles as she and Selphie plopped down with a collection of other girls a few tables away. Riku was unaware of the perturbed frown tugging at his mouth as he watched in turn, just as puzzled and wondering why teenage girls had to be so damn weird.

Then Roxas stared at Riku, curious.

And Riku stared back, troubled.

"Can I help you?" Roxas asked.

Riku cringed. He actually, really cringed. It startled Roxas. He watched the expression on Riku's face change with the path of his thoughts, a path impossible to follow amidst the clouds in his eyes, the already wan frown that was currently creasing his temple deepening further as the only forewarning. He regarded Roxas with a pained scrutiny, looking him up and down, and then he grunted, "Nice wristband."

Roxas blinked down at his checkered wristband, blinked back up at Riku, and then he frowned. It was more of a scowl, but softer, and less antagonistic. He didn't really understand why Riku wanted to talk to him; it wasn't like there was a bone to pick. Roxas hadn't gotten into any arguments or caused any trouble that he knew of—but then again, that was _that he knew of_. His stomach twisted up. He hated that feeling. After a moment of wondering whether or not to put forth amiability, he chose the affirmative and murmured briefly, "Thanks. It's my favorite."

Riku's brows knotted further. The boy across the table absently played with the plastic fork jabbed into his cup of noodles, movement of his arm and fingers smooth and slow, _almost_ graceful, but in a way unsettlingly contradicting his normal clumsiness. His eyes were dark blue as they analyzed him from below his lashes.

Like he didn't recognize him.

And that more or less pissed Riku off. Along with making him _quite _alarmed, on top of already being infinitely nervous in that childhood sweetheart, innocently awkward love kind of way. Riku rose his brows skeptically, testing the integrity of those words. "Why haven't you worn it before, then?"

Roxas eyed the other boy warily. "...I wear it every day," he corrected. Then he tilted his head to the side and peered absently at Riku, observing the smooth curve of his jaw and the layered shocks of his hair. He had almond-shaped eyes, a piercing sea-green. Yet he looked...incomplete. That was the only word Roxas could come up with. And then he realized that he was staring at Riku's face like he was trying to remember it from somewhere and that was more than a little awkward because it was _true_, so Roxas hurriedly spat out, "Is that seriously all you wanted to talk about? My wristband? And I wear it all the time?"

Riku stared. Roxas considered that he looked agonizingly incredulous, brows knotted and eyes bitter and lips parted as though a perplexed question was awaiting its release behind his teeth. He looked cold and bewildered all at once, and it was kind of frightening to be stared at by someone foreign like that.

"You've never worn that wristband since I met you," Riku claimed.

Roxas frowned, and it was apologetic but there was still a hint of disdain. He insisted gently, "I don't think I know you."

Laughter exploded from the other end of the table where a group of freshmen had discovered that when you stuck a milk straw into the school's mashed potatoes and blew as hard as you could, it looked something like a miniature explosion.

Riku froze, then swallowed tightly. Those words of denial—_I don't think I know you_—struck him somewhere deep, and a poignant throb spread upwards from the pit of his chest. Was this kid seriously trying to forget what had happened—and was that even physically possible? Well, he figured, if it could be done, it would probably be intriguing little Sora to do it, and if he wanted to play it that way, Riku could sure as hell do the same. It was childish, but he had a feeling that he'd break him down if he fought back; that was just how you had to handle someone like Sora, right? "Don't give me that. That's pathetic."

Roxas tensed up, flicking his gaze up from the soggy noodles and single green pea balanced precariously on his fork, up and across the table to the boy with the long silvery-platinum hair. Riku was craning forward, and whatever concurrence previously existing between coldness and confusion had dissipated. He just looked cold. Roxas's eyes narrowed and he bit his mouth into a thin line, dumping the ramen cradled in the utensil back into the cup and tapping the plastic prongs of his fork on the edge of it. "'Pathetic'?" he repeated dryly. "I'm _pathetic_ because I don't remember meeting you, hunh? Obviously, you _really_ don't know me. And I _really_ don't know you."

_God, what a CREEP. Kairi really has the weirdest taste in—_

Riku slammed a palm to the tabletop. Roxas's eyes began to widen, but he carefully kept his glare. He'd been in enough arguments to know that all early violence was usually a bluff for poor hooks, but if you reacted as desired, it was merely giving away the upper hand like a grocery store freebie. But maybe he was still slightly intimidated, because he felt like he owed something to this creep, and he didn't know what that _something_ was.

"Alright, LOOK_—_" Riku barked. Roxas ducked his head, nose near to bumping the Styrofoam of his lunch; glancing down the table from the corner of his eye, he saw that the kids sitting at the opposite end had abandoned their edible experiments and were avidly watching the spectacle this silver-haired buttface was making. How embarrassing. Nevertheless, Riku was still talking. Roxas peered at him through his lashes, hunched forward and silenced in chagrin.

"—If you don't want me around, just tell me flat-out. Don't start playing games with me, alright? I don't need that—"

And then Kairi's hand was on Riku's shoulder and she was jerking him away from the table, dragging him off and leaving Roxas to wallow in his ignorance and stare at his ramen as he wracked his brain for any explanation for this sudden barrage of surprises. After a moment, he shot an irascible scowl at his unconventional audience and spat, "Stop gawking, you bunch of losers!" Then he propped his cheek in his hand and glared at his lunch. He wasn't hungry anymore.

"What is your _problem_?!" Kairi cried at the sophomore in tow, stomping a few more feet before turning around to slap her little balled fist into his shoulder. Riku blinked as a vast number of bracelets jangled in his face. He was in shock, Kairi knew that, but she needed to step in. Pronto.

Riku gathered his bearings sloppily, giving her a dark stare. She was a few inches shorter, her hands propped rather authoritatively on her hips, glowering right back up at him. And she was just _scary_ somehow.

Kairi addressed him again. "What is your—"

Riku broke. He grimaced softly and flung his arm out, emphasizing the table they had just stumbled away from, knowing that they were far enough away for him to erupt fairly. He just couldn't keep it in, and if he had to regurgitate his anxieties, why not to Sora's closest friend? "What's...what's wrong with him? Why is he acting like that?"

"Because—"

"Wouldn't it be easier if he just told me to fuck off?"

"He's not like that, Riku."

"I don't understand why he's acting like he's never met me. That's immature and—"

She clapped her hands across his mouth to shut him up and he blinked, baffled by her brazen actions. Not one person that knew him would have done that, because they knew that if they did, he'd knock them upside the head, just like any other self-respecting teenager with a temper. But Kairi's lower lip was stuck out like she was pouting, her indigo eyes were sincerely desperate, and Riku could understand that horrible sensation. And maybe he _was_ panicking a little. So he obediently shut up.

"I'm begging you, Riku." She didn't take her hands away. Her skin was soft and smelled something like fruit, but she was wearing a little silver ring with a yellow star on top that was poking into his nose and it was kind of annoying. "You just have to be patient and understanding. That's the only way you can handle this."

Riku scowled, pulling her hands away from his mouth and the star away from his nose. "Do you know how horrible my weekend has been? I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I sucked so bad at the game against Bastion High that I was _benched_. Sunday I could barely function and my mother thought I was sick. I have been freaking the hell out over this—"

"Over what?"

Riku blinked, caught off guard. His glower shifted into a dumbstruck stare and after a moment, the gears in his head began turning again and he realized he'd been caught practically red-handed. Frowning petulantly, he murmured, "Well, you and Sora are pretty close. I'm sure he talked to you about it all."

Kairi's lips skewed up into a tense smile. "I just wanted to see if you'd say it out loud."

"I just...didn't think he'd react like that."

"You have to trust me. He's not doing this on purpose. You have to be patient—"

"Yeah, you've said that already. But I don't _get _it. How can you give someone the cold shoulder on accident?"

"Riku, you _scared_ him. Because of what happened with his dad, he just can't—" Kairi cut herself off. She stared at Riku angrily, as though _he_ had caused her verbal slip-up. Then she pressed her lips into a tight line and peered apologetically up at him, knowing she'd said far too much and wouldn't be able to elaborate. But Kairi should have known that all her mental urging away from that topic would be to no avail. It was just one of those cliché instances where the mouth ran faster than the brain and before you knew it, you were saying something you shouldn't be, and it was all too obvious when you shut up mid-sentence that your words weren't appropriate for the situation. Her abrupt silence only piqued his curiosity further and the intensity of his stare nearly made her open her big fat mouth again. She could help, but she couldn't do _that_.

"What happened with his dad?"

"Just go with it. That's all you can do."

She gaped at him. She wondered if he was aware that, after pulling her hands off his face, he was still gripping her by the wrists. He was leaning forward imploringly, his heavy gaze close to pleading. He was scared; she could understand that. And he had a right to be. This wasn't the suspense a guy had to anticipate with a normal crush, but it wasn't like she could explain. Sora would hate her forever if she spilled the beans before he could. But Riku was just waiting, just staring, just...looking very good.

Kairi shook her head rapidly to clear her thoughts, mahogany locks of hair whipping her cheeks with each swivel of her face. Her knees were weak. Why did she have to be such a girl, again? It was outright _unfair_ to be plagued by such hormonally influenced feelings! Especially in her current situation, for crying out loud.

And maybe God—yes, the same God that had a habit of torturing a poor, confused Hayate boy—heard her cries of injustice, because at that very moment, the bell rang and the cafeteria near to exploded with commotion.

Something rolled over in his mind as he let go of her and stepped away, and Riku decided that there _had _to be an explanation worth waiting for. He had no idea what was going on presently, but there had to be something at the end of it, right? And besides that, he was intrigued. It was horribly out of place, but he was _intrigued_. "Yeah," he husked out. His heart was still racing frantically. "Yeah, I'll go with it. But I'm trusting you, Kairi."

She nodded hastily and gave him a cheerless smile; then she held up her pinky finger to signify her word was true, and Riku quirked into the shadow of a smile in reply.

As he hurried back to grab his bag from where Cloud stood guarding it, he could have sworn he felt a heavy blue stare on him. But when he turned to return the glance, the table a few feet away was empty save for an abandoned cup of Maruchan ramen.

* * *

Tidus suddenly had a severe inclination to know what was going on in Riku's life. He had always been that kind of friend, but lately—the conversation held while he repaired the Hayate dryer and the random phone call Sunday afternoon case in point—he was concerned beyond Riku's comfort zone. The blond caught up with him in the hallway as he made his way with the rest of the student body out into the afternoon's freedom, grabbing his shoulder to gain his immediate attention even if it was slightly hostile.

"Hey, Riku."

He flicked an aquamarine eye, partially curtained behind layers of pale hair, in the direction of the voice as Tidus stumbled up beside him. The denim jacket he had been wearing earlier was poking sloppily out of his half-zipped backpack as he tried to maintain Riku's swift pace and affix a baseball cap on his messy head at the same time. The cap matched his T-shirt, both proudly bearing support for the Zanarkand team. Apart from being a grease-monkey, Tidus was an avid sports fan. It was just another part of his eccentricity.

"Hey," Riku replied, and he could feel a sarcastic remark biding its time behind his lips about Tidus's massive collection of Zanarkand logos, but as they hurried along with the crowd towards the front entrance, he swallowed the words without much trouble. He just didn't feel like putting forth the effort. Instead, he glanced back at the shorter boy and asked, "What's wrong?"

"'What's wrong'?" the blonde snorted. Riku blinked, startled by his raspy outburst. Tidus turned a sharp frown up at him, countering, "What's wrong with _you_? That's the question here."

Riku's jaw clenched into a rather cross frown as he cast his gaze away from the blonde, shifting his bag to the other shoulder. Of course. Poor Tidus was probably on a mission to gain information as to why Riku had ditched the lunch table, and that was explanation enough for the tentative interrogations and a phone call out of the blue. "There's nothing wrong," Riku replied, ducking out of the way of a few raucous students and stretching an arm out in front of Tidus to ensure he didn't get trampled either.

Tidus pinched into a disbelieving scowl that was comically large, regarding the taller boy with a shake of the head. "Dude, you might think that no one notices your bad moods, but me and Wakka do."

Riku first rolled his eyes because he _didn't _think people ignored him, and that was a major problem of his most of the time; but then he sighed, glimpsing at Tidus from the corner of his eye with a shade of disappointment because he was well aware of who his friends were and who they weren't and didn't need a patronizing reminder. "Thanks, Tidus, but I'm serious. There's nothing wrong."

The blonde snorted again, a charismatic scoff as he rolled his gaze up to the ceiling. "Come _on_, man, you should know that the _worst_ place for drama is lunchtime."

"Maybe you guys shouldn't be _watching_. I was at a different fucking table."

"You're asking for privacy, at high school, at lunch?"

"We had a misunderstanding."

"You blew up on him, Riku."

They exchanged glances of reciprocal understanding, Tidus just bearing a strange gift of abnormally right assumptions and Riku just wanting him to keep quiet about whatever creation his mind had spawned.

The sophomores pushed through the front entrance, the doors propped wide open with cinder blocks the janitors had put in position ten minutes before the last bell rang. Outside the buses were lining up and the schoolyard was still heavily populated by adolescents; it would clear out in twenty to thirty minutes, but the first ten were always the most chaotic.

Tidus was what Riku considered a friend. Not a friend like Sora, but someone that he could talk to without getting frustrated. Yuffie or Tifa were always capable of pulling strings backstage, but Riku could be sure that Tidus was all good intentions, regardless.

But he just _couldn't _tell him about all that.

"Why do you care, Tidus?" Riku backed out of the onrush of bodies and into an empty corner of the cement stoop, dropping his backpack to his feet and crossing his arms. "Do you want me back at the table, or is it, like, because I'm 'distracted' or something during games?"

"_No_," Tidus defended, a bit affronted by the supposition. "You've just been acting weird...and, Riku—I could hear _your voice_ over the noise of the cafeteria. When you talk that loud, it's bad."

"Why do you think you need to govern my other friendships?" That came out quicker than Riku had processed. Tidus looked a little blindsided. Then he just looked pissed. In fact, he _was_ pissed. He was so pissed that he took off his cap and used it to emphasize his words, tapping it against Riku's chest with every point he wanted to make.

"You're my friend. You act like I don't know you get irritated by everyone at our table. Like I don't know you want to be left alone. But I do! I'm not trying to be nosy, Riku. I just want to know what's _wrong_. Isn't that what friends do? They take care of their friends?"

"_I know that_," Riku spat, pushing the Zanarkand cap clutched in Tidus's fist away from his collarbone. Of course he knew that. Now, at least. He'd learned it, front-row seat and A, over the past few weeks and currently he was struggling to hold onto that knowledge. Without outside influences watching over his shoulder.

He opened his mouth to put all that into words, but at that very moment there was suddenly a third member to their party on the high school threshold, standing there awkwardly with his hands on his hips.

Tidus blinked his gaze away from Riku, and as he cast it to this new face it shifted from pissed to startled to perceptive. Riku's eyes followed, immediately following a faintly resemblant path.

"Hi," Roxas mumbled, looking between the two as though he expected a punch to be thrown.

"Yo," Tidus grunted beneath his breath, something like _Oh, I get it. You don't even have to say anything_, and then he petted the wrinkles out of his Zanarkand cap, nodded subsequent farewell to Roxas, glanced at Riku to signify that their discussion was far from over, and hopped down the concrete stoop to catch his bus, calling for Wakka to save him a seat in the back.

And so the blond Zanarkand fan left them there, just like that, and Riku glared at the cement for a moment before looking at the boy next to him, beginning with the closest items to his gaze—his feet. As his eyes moved upwards, connections began to line up in his mind, and by the time he'd panned up from Sora's black Converse (somehow he had a feeling they had been dug out of the corner of his room this morning)—past worn-in and tattered denim, a band T-shirt and checkered wristband, his normally untouched tawny layers of hair strewn to the right and kept in place probably by a number of hair products Riku couldn't even pronounce the names of—to his pinched frown and dark blue eyes, he had been hit by a realization that hadn't struck him in the fog of alarm during lunch. Why, he wasn't sure, but it was definitely clear now.

Oh, the boy standing in front of him with a gloomy stare and his hands on his hips was still Sora Kaimana the enigmatic freshman. But he was somewhere far away today, because the person there now was someone entirely different. Riku couldn't explain it, let alone understand it, but from what he could clue together by the events having occurred since Friday afternoon, Sora had become a complete stranger.

It was a daunting idea.

And Roxas, this complete stranger to Riku, alone with him on the left side of the cement entryway as students continued to trickle out of the building beside them, suddenly shifted forward and gave him a concise hug.

Riku blinked, tensing up in the awkward embrace. It felt all elbows, pretty damn forced if you asked him, but he took it as a truce.

Though, he wasn't quite comfortable with this complete stranger hugging him, especially with the whole school available as audience.

But the kid pulled away, eyeing Riku through his lashes and a misplaced lock of hair. One of his hands remained on Riku's shoulder, limp and light and not at all confident but still very warm all the same.

"Riku..." It was still Sora's voice, and yet his name sounded different coming out. "I'm sorry. Will you..." He paused as if it were a great effort to drag the words out. "...forgive me?"

Riku peered at the frowning brunet with more than a little scrutiny. Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe this wasn't a _complete stranger_... No, that was all grand hope. He knew it wasn't Sora; it just wasn't.

But that didn't mean he had to deny a perfectly deserved _I'm sorry_.

"It's fine. I'm just..." Riku regarded the other boy as he sought the right words—and the confidence to say them to someone unfamiliar to him. "...kind of lost here. If you know what I mean, Sora."

The kid's expression fell suddenly, shattering from thin frown to incredulous scowl in a matter of two seconds. But when his hand slipped away from its warm notch on his shoulder, Riku realized that he was more correct in his assumptions than he'd acknowledged. He could tell by the look in Sora's—er, this complete stranger's eyes, how the blue was unnaturally turbid. It was like there was someone else using his exterior, completely different on the inside.

"Sora?" The boy looked rather offended at the very sound of the name. "I'm Roxas." He cut Riku a highly critical glance, frowning deeply. "You should know that if we're going out."

Riku's thoughts were moving incredibly slow for the current problems at hand, slow enough to make it hard for him to really comprehend what was going on. But at that moment they halted altogether and he focused on two things, and two things only—who the fuck had taken control over his Sora, and who the fuck had told him they were going out?

The poor soul had barely sputtered out a denial of the announcement—_You should know that if we're going out_—totally forgetting the fact that this complete stranger—or, really, _Roxas_ had just introduced himself, because as he tried to align vocal sounds and speech mechanisms into vowels and consonants and syllables and eventually words, his gaze fell past Roxas's shoulder and onto two girls standing near the curb. That was when he stopped because _everything_ clicked in his mind, and he really didn't like other people fucking around with his personal business.

Brushing past Roxas, leaving him standing by his backpack, perplexed yet again, Riku stormed down the stoop and towards the two girls. One he easily overlooked and the other he knew to have her nose far too deep into the goings-on of his life.

"_Kairi_," he managed to grit out as he advanced, and both Kairi and Selphie turned startled smiles upon him, smiles that soon faded and merely left their counterpart of surprise in what seemed like a calmer version of the common deer-in-headlights expression. A deer with lip gloss and eyeliner, perhaps, but on the same level of alarm.

"Oh, hi, Riku." Kairi struggled to maintain her bright grin, jabbing her elbow into whichever part of Selphie's body was nearest. She beamed, indigo eyes big and innocent, and when Selphie did nothing but grunt and sway with each elbow shot in her direction, Kairi finally spun and cried, "Will you please go away?"

"—Okay, okay! Geez!" Selphie scowled prettily and strutted away to join Roxas on the stoop, giving a rather dramatic roll of her eyes, because Kairi was just _so selfish _sometimes.

"Hi, Riku," Kairi began again as blamelessly as she could, but she only made it to _Ri—_ before Riku cut her off.

"Did you tell So—I mean, Roxas—did you tell Roxas that we were _going out_?"

Boy, he was really mad. His face was very red and the lightness of his hair only made the flush more vibrant. Kairi blinked, shrinking down a bit. Her smile faded. Instead she tried puppy-dog eyes. "No, I told him that _you two_ were going out."

"That's what I _meant_, Kairi."

"Well, you know his name now. That's good."

Riku gnashed his teeth, fists clenched absently. "Kairi, is that the only thing you're good for? Snooping around in other people's relationships?"

That was when she opted it would be better if she stopped playing around. Frowning, she crossed her arms and tilted her head, a few strands of mahogany falling across the cartilage of her ear, loose from their green bobby-pins. "Riku, do you realize that without me, you would have probably ruined whatever _relationship_ you have with Sora forever?"

Riku opened his mouth to retort. Then he snapped it shut. Because Kairi was right. After a moment of recovering from that consideration, he visibly relaxed, took a deep breath, and mumbled beneath his heavy sigh, "Clearly you know what's going on here."

"I do."

"...Can you just tell me, then? It'll make it a whole lot easier. On all of us."

Kairi chewed on her lower lip anxiously, brows furrowed as she looked past his shoulder to her two friends near the high school entrance. Selphie and Roxas were leaning against the brick of the building, Selphie looking entirely rapt in whatever it was she was babbling about and Roxas looking as though he could care less but would still listen. She'd had a feeling that, with Sora's dense obstinacy, there would come a point when she'd have to seriously take this into her own hands rather than just poking it in the right direction, and instead of feeling honored, or even powerful, she just felt wrong.

"Do you know what..." Kairi trailed off, frowned, and then found the right words. "Do you know what dissociative identity disorder is?"

Riku stared at her quite impassively, hypothesizing dryly, "So because of whatever 'trauma' that happened to him when he was little, he's schizo now."

Kairi's jaw dropped. For one, because she'd forgotten that the tidbit about Sora's childhood had accidentally slipped out, and for two, because Riku was being so _rude_ about it!

But, she considered, maybe he just didn't want to seem like he was panicking again, because the look in his eyes was definitely not nonchalance.

"Not..._schizo_. _Schizo_ is something entirely different."

"Dissociative...identity disorder?"

"DID for short."

"So..." Riku's blank face soured into a thin frown and his brows furrowed, backing up Kairi's inquisition unknowingly. He peered at her, as if searching her face for the next words, but what he was really looking for was the ability to go on. He cleared his throat and tried again, easing it out below his breath. "So, Sora's...not Sora?"

Kairi slouched, a guilty grimace passing a cloud over her face. "Oh, no, no—_Roxas_ isn't _Roxas_. But don't you _dare _tell him that!"

Riku continued to eye her, silently, and she could tell that he was trying his hardest to process it all. And she was sure that on top of all that, he was very scared but not about to show it. She could sympathize. Three years ago, it had been awkward for them, too. Folding her arms behind her back, Kairi picked up the conversation's frayed end softly with all the information she could comprise into a rambling explanation: "You're right. Because of what happened...um, _before_...he has DID. Instead of dealing with painful problems head-on, his mind wants to become somebody different who doesn't have to handle it. At least, that's the way he explained it to me. It's not like you can just feed him pills to get rid of it, though. He has special counseling. I mean, it doesn't make him any different...and Roxas is a good friend, too."

"They're completely separate people, but they share the same body. How is that possible?" Riku's frown deepened. He slid his hands into his pockets and she knew that she had his full attention. In a way, his devotion was heartbreaking, and in another it was invigorating. She smiled faintly.

"Sora knows he has DID and he hates it." Kairi sighed in compassion for her friends, shifting her weight to the opposite foot. "Roxas doesn't know about Sora. He thinks he just has really bad memory lapses because of something from the past that he's blocked out of his head completely. He hates it, too."

"Don't people notice? Don't they tell...Roxas?"

"Well, yeah, they notice." Kairi blinked at Riku as though he had said the stupidest thing on the planet. Riku shrugged. "Teachers and everyone have been warned. You think his mother would send him to school without first making sure they knew what was going on?"

"What about classmates—?"

"Word gets around, Riku."

It was silent for a moment, a heavy, poignant silence, as Riku stared at the sidewalk beneath their feet and let everything settle in, wondering how in the world he hadn't heard about Roxas if "_word got around_". Although, he felt suddenly ten times better, knowing that there was a solid reason for Sora's—Roxas's reaction during lunch, that it wasn't just outright rejection. But there was still a tiny, anxious _thing _nibbling the back of his mind and making his stomach knot up, because even though he was understanding Sora and Roxas's dilemma, he didn't know _why_, _when_, _what_, _how_, and everything else that he _needed_ to know. It was irritating at the same time, but God, this kid was intriguing. And there was still the matter of—

"Wait..." Riku's brows furrowed as he lifted his gaze back up to meet Kairi's, said matter rearing itself again in the priority station of his mind. "_Wait_! Why did you tell him we were going out?"

"To make it easier on you both. That way you don't have to start at the bottom again—"

"How could you do that?! I'm not going out with _Roxas_, and I'm not going out with _Sora, _either!"

"_Even so_," Kairi emphasized, returning the glare that she was getting from the sophomore, "e_ven so_, it'll be easier for you to be around Roxas if he thinks he met you during a memory lapse, and that you guys are going out. That way you're familiar to both of them and you don't have to start all over with one. Because if you're in love with Sora, you've gotta love Roxas, too."

Riku opened his mouth and he _wanted_ to say something along the lines of I'm-not-in-love-with-Sora-I-just-tried-to-kiss-him, realized that was probably a paradox, reformed the sentence into Who-ever-mentioned-love-we-aren't-even-going-out-yet, then quickly dropped the _yet _and tried a formation of I-never-said-I-loved-Sora, but soon realized that anything he said in defiance of Kairi's statement would only serve to make him look superficial and small-minded—and, more plainly, a liar.

So instead, Riku's jaws shut with an audible _click_ and he snuck a glance over his shoulder at Roxas. "He's different from Sora," he reiterated, more for his own understanding than for establishment of the fact.

"Yes," Kairi agreed tolerantly. "Two different people."

"When will Sora come back?"

"When Roxas goes away."

"How long does it usually last?"

"You never know."

Riku's gaze shifted back to Kairi petulantly, but his sharp glimpse softened at the dismal frown he found tugging down her lips. His thoughts wrestled for the right to become vocalized again—things like personalities, time, traumas, and relationships struggled for value—and after a moment of considering the dejected look on the girl's face, he chose to ask, "Why didn't Sora tell me before?"

"Because he's ashamed."

"I wouldn't look down on him. I don't, in fact."

"I'm sure he'd love to hear that from you." If they were in a perfect situation, her sentence should have ended in a tight smile as the atmosphere relaxed, Riku walking away knowing that he had to be patient and accept Roxas if he ever wanted Sora, which he would do because he was a gentleman deep down in there, she knew it, and she would walk away to snatch Selphie from the steps so they could catch the bus, and Selphie would ask her what was wrong and Kairi would smile and shake her head and say _Absolutely nothing_. But the circumstances equaled out her wide-eyed yelp as buses began to disembark from the school sidewalk, bulky bodies creaking and wailing as the engines started up and the red STOP signs reattached themselves to the dingy yellow metal.

"I have to go," Kairi rushed out, and she giggled apologetically—something not at all like her normal laugh, but at the same speed—as she ran towards bus 29, waving and screaming for Selphie to hurry or they'd miss it and have to walk.

Riku stood with his hands in his pockets, watching as the buses pulled away, the two freshman girls having boarded at the last second. The schoolyard had emptied halfway in that remarkable fashion that one tries to keep track of but can never fully watch, kids diffusing in every direction at every pace. His brows furrowed faintly and he looked at the rubber toes of his Converse, mulling over everything for a moment, and then he trudged off to retrieve his backpack from the doorway. He figured Roxas would probably expect a farewell from him. Glancing at him as he bent and picked his bag up by the strap, Riku sighed through his nose, mouth set in a firm line.

He looked so much like Sora, but there was just something about him that made him someone completely different. How he'd managed to do it, Riku didn't know, but he would be _insane_ to deny any traces of...what was it Kairi had said? DID.

"...Roxas," he finally edged out, and the boy peered coyly at Riku through his lashes.

"Do I get an apology for earlier?" Roxas mumbled, crossing his arms.

Riku blinked, frown fading slowly. The younger boy just looked so _staid_, it threw him off balance. "I didn't know. I'm sorry."

"You don't sound serious."

Riku sighed again, shoulders drooping with the heavy exhalation, then hooked his bag on his shoulder and prepared to redo his apology. Patience, right? Obviously.

But then Roxas grinned, uttering a raspy chortle, and the other boy cut him a startled glance from the corner of his eyes. That was when he noticed the playful gleam in the dark blue irises hidden beneath layered locks of brown hair. He couldn't help it; he just didn't know how to read Roxas like he could read Sora.

_I guess I'll just have to learn_, he amended, observing not-Sora a moment before glancing past him up at the sky. It looked like it wanted to rain. He hoped it would happen before soccer practice. A muddy field was never fun for anything but baseball.

"I'm just kidding, man." Roxas hoisted up his satchel bag from where it sat—or, to Riku, who had been particularly distracted when Roxas had approached, he picked it up from where it had suddenly appeared. "I'm sorry, too. I guess I didn't tell you about my forgetfulness."

"No, I guess you didn't."

"Well. I forgot." Roxas smiled wryly. Maybe Kairi's nosiness had really been in order. It seemed to be working, after all. He had lightened up quite noticeably, even though it was hard to tell because his sense of humor was a rather grim sarcasm. Riku glanced at him once more as they descended the entryway to the sidewalk, just to make sure it was really Sora-turned-Roxas again. Yup, it was the real deal. And something about being familiar with both of Sora's personas felt kind of intimate. Riku decided he didn't have that big of a problem putting up with Roxas, after he got used to him, of course. As long as Sora came back _soon_.

"So, do you walk me home yet, or no?"

Riku blinked. "Ah...no." _But if you were Sora today, I would walk home with you and make you dinner. But, see, you're NOT._

"Then I'll see you tomorrow, Riku."

"Mm...I have soccer practice after school tomorrow."

"I'll go and watch." Roxas nodded to confirm his promise. They stood at the edge of the school sidewalk. At this point, both would have to take a left and walk to the intersection of Sylvia and Brennen, at which the path to Sora's house would cross the street and continue straight-forward through the busy parts of town, and Riku's walk home would call for another left down Sylvia. But Roxas stopped at the curb and watched as Riku stumbled to a halt as well, regarding the other boy curiously.

"I guess this is where we part," Roxas announced, smiling awkwardly. Riku frowned, thinking, _Not really, but if you can remember the way home, you can go whatever direction you'd like—_

"Sure," Riku said to cut off his bitter thoughts, knowing that they would serve no good whether inside his mind or not. "See you tomorrow, Roxas."

"Later," Roxas acquiesced, and turned on his heel, leaving the silver-haired boy standing on the concrete and watching. After he couldn't count the cracks in the sidewalk that Roxas stepped over any longer, Riku turned and started walking home.

* * *

**A/N:**

**Edited 11.12.2008: It was brought to my attention by ParasiteTsugiri that some of my information regarding the disorder I'm using for this story was not up to date with the current medical/psychological standpoint. **

**The details as far as the disorder are still the same and I am not changing anything within the plot, but I want to get this out in the open:**

**The term "Multiple Personality Disorder" is, basically, not being used anymore. The real term is "Dissociative Identity Disorder", or DID.**

**Like I said, this does not change the plot or the details of the disorder, but I'm going to go back and change the term usage within the chapters because...hahah, well, because I was using the wrong term. That was my slip-up, sorry.**

**Here is a link for more information. Just remove the parantheses: **

http://en(.)wikipedia(.)org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder

**The disorder will definitely be mentioned again in later chapters.**

**As far as**_** this **_**chapter goes, reviews always welcomed. :D**


	6. Fumbling His Confidence

_****_

Candy Boy

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the amazing franchise © Disney and Square Enix; everything else © their rightful owners. **

**Ratings/Warnings: M—profanity, graphic themes, AU**

* * *

_Chapter Six_

* * *

It was all fairly entertaining at first, all of Roxas's quirky indignations and unique resolve; Riku found it quite humorous that he became defensive about the tiniest instances. It began with a debate over favorite bands, then favorite books, and soon became generalities like what annoyed him and what didn't, and on and on. It was all fun and games to Riku, all an innocently amused exploration of Roxas's differences and his difficult depths, all good times while Roxas huffed and puffed all through lunch and Kairi watched with an awkward giggle from the end of the table and Riku argued back just enough to make Roxas pout and then resigned with a pleased grin—all until Roxas mentioned the way he played his game.

_That_ was where Riku drew the line.

Tuesday afternoon, Roxas did indeed show up at soccer practice, and he had Kairi and Selphie in tow. Every time Riku snuck a glance between dribbling and shooting drills, laps, exercise stations and orange cones, he saw his freshman audience seated rather quaintly on a parking block a few yards away from the edge of the field. They looked entirely out of place and yet somehow picturesque, the high school building towering behind them across the parking lot, two girls talking and grinning and eyeing up the team, one with purple barettes in her hair and the other with sloppy pigtails (the one with the sloppy pigtails was Selphie, and Riku found the fact that she'd changed out her tiny yellow polo for a Traverse City High School Soccer tee very, very galling), and the boy on the end of the parking block slumped moodily with his arms crossed on his knees, a dark frown settled on the player with silver hair. He'd look away when Riku looked up at them, though, and pretend like he had been watching everyone else in equal intervals. But Riku knew better.

He had stopped to get a drink of water, panting gently and raking a hand through his hair to remove the damp, sticky strands from his temple. It was a cool day, the sky a dark gray as the rainy season advanced with the autumn, and he was pretty sure that the three freshmen were close to freezing out in the parking lot without jackets. He was sweating but he was also wearing a long-sleeved shirt, let alone moving around explosively. Glancing over his shoulder as he recapped his water bottle, he licked his lips of the excess water and tossed the bottle to the grass near his backpack. Tidus's laughter broke through the noise of voices, motion, and whistles to fill the air, loud and proud and followed by the coach's reprimands of No Goofing Off, Last Game on Saturday, Need to Work Hard, and etcetera. Hands on his hips, Riku left the field, his breath calming down as he strode across the gravel to the first row of carless parking blocks. Tidus's antics would keep Coach Highwind busy enough for him to sneak away momentarily.

"Hey," he asserted, and as he came to a stop in front of the three on the parking block, he had full attention from all, the girl on the end looking bubbly, the girl in the middle looking nervous, and the boy on the other end looking dour.

"Hey." Of course Kairi was the only one to reply, straightening up between her two friends and offering the soccer player a big smile.

"Uh...it's cold out," Riku stated flatly, and hurried out the rest of his statement so as not to sound too gauche. "Why don't you guys go home?"

"Aww..." Selphie folded her arms and leaned against her knees, sulking lightly. "That's no fair. We're just watching practice. It's not like we're causing any trouble, right?"

"Are we distracting you?" Kairi beamed, and by now Riku knew her well enough to recognize the utter tease behind the angel face.

"_No_," Riku murmured tersely, and her smile wavered for just a moment before she turned it upon Roxas to salvage it. Roxas glimpsed at her through his lashes and then looked back up at Riku, hugging his knees loosely. He peered at the sophomore, at the silver hair that the breeze played with limply, lips parted as though he wanted to say something. Riku blinked after a moment, feeling kind of powerless to the blazing blue of those familiar-unfamiliar eyes and not liking it at all. The boy sitting on the parking block wielded the silence perfectly, and Riku really didn't know whether he was just staring or if he was really about to talk.

After a few more seconds, Roxas did speak. He motioned with one shoulder towards the field and mumbled softly, "You might want to get back in there before you get in trouble."

Riku blinked at first, followed by a gentle scowl. He'd expected something maybe a little more hostile from the grumpy boy. But, Roxas had a point; wondering just how much passed time Coach Highwind would recognize, Riku turned on his heel with gravel crunching beneath it and jogged back to the field without a second glance behind him. The coach regarded him with a sharp scowl—the expression most commonly seen on his face, and there was a theory that stated it was carved into his head permanently—and crossed his arms authoritatively. Before he could say a word, though, a sudden blur of blond and grass stains flew at Riku from somewhere behind him, and Tidus successfully knocked him off balance with a wild laugh.

"Hey, _baby_! _What_ are you doing? The _last game_ off _the season_ is on _Saturday_," Tidus parodied the earlier speech he'd received from Coach Highwind emphatically, "so that means no _flirting_, you hear me? We don't got time for _flirting_! We gotta work _hard_ if we wanna _pulverize_ Island City! If you wanna _flirt_, do it on your_ own _time! _This_ team didn't get _awesome_ because the players all _flirted_ during practice—"

By the time Tidus had gotten a good amount of aggravating words out, Riku had finally won the struggle out from beneath him, and the rest of the team was laughing at his impressions. Riku flipped over and pinned the hysterical blond to the grass, hoping he made a stain so deep no bleach would be strong enough to erase it. Tidus didn't realize the extent of the other boy's opposition, simply cackling and wrestling along, but when Riku's fingers curled near his collar and he leaned in close enough to hiss into his ear, Tidus thought that maybe Riku wasn't in the mood for jokes.

"Shut up, Tidus," he gritted out. The cluster of boys had diffused away into other conversations, leaving the two on the ground to sort out their play fight. "I wasn't flirting with anybody."

"Don't get your shorts in a knot—"

"That wasn't funny. _At all_."

"Okay, I'm sorry—"

"Three laps," Coach Highwind demanded, attempting to drag the team back into order. "Now!"

* * *

It was five-thirty when the coach called the afternoon a good practice, dismissing the team with a twist of his scowl into something short of a smirk. The usual claps on the back and farewells of _See you tomorrow_ were exchanged, and as he stooped down to shove his water bottle into his backpack, Riku glanced across the edge of the field to find the parking block vacated save for one bored looking boy with a checkered wristband. Sea-green eyes flicked inquisitively towards the rest of the team, waiting for rides home or just generally loitering around. In their midst—well, in Wakka's midst—were the two girls that had previously been in the parking lot.

Sighing heavily, he hoisted his bag to his shoulder and meandered over to the lone boy sitting on the slab of concrete.

"Hey," he said, hoping he came across as casual as he wanted to. Roxas peeked up at him through locks of hair with one dark blue eye.

"Hey," he replied, easily enough.

"You sure you're not cold?"

"It's a little chilly. Didn't we go over this?"

Riku figured that was playful sarcasm. "Mm, maybe. So..." But before he could really form any random thought into a sentence, Roxas was leaning back and giving him a full view of his face, and Riku considered for a moment that he looked very sweet.

Oh, and yet the words that came out of Roxas's mouth next were anything but sweet.

"You really need to work on your dribbling," he advised absently, palms propped on the parking block for support as he craned back a bit further. Innocuous, almost. Fucking innocent.

Riku's face curdled into a tight scowl and he dropped his backpack to the ground. He didn't even stop to think through his words, just let them rip right out of his throat because if they didn't, they'd build up inside him and his face would probably malfunction from the intensity of his glower—"What makes you think you can tell me what I need to practice? I don't see _you _on this team, so what gives you the right to give me advice?"

Roxas froze right where he sat, but the expression on his face slowly changed from absent-minded to an incredulous frown and then he leaned forward again, only to swing up and stand next to the sophomore. Hands on his hips, he retorted, "I'm just saying that I think if you dribble the ball that far out in front of you, it's easier for an opponent to get."

"We've won every game except last week's. Obviously I must be doing something right."

"Obviously not last week."

Riku narrowed his eyes further. Roxas was peering back at him with a defensive anger that seemed too offhanded to be normal. Everything about him was an act of nonchalance, and it drove Riku crazy. Who was this kid, to criticize the way he played soccer? Who was he to give him such an attitude? Who was he to take the place of—

"Look," Riku forced out as calmly as he could, and it still emerged as a hiss. "I don't need your help, Roxas. I'm one of the best players. If that means anything at all."

Roxas crossed his arms and looked down at his feet as he shuffled the rubber toes of his Converse in the gravel. "There has to be one hell of a reason I'm dating you," he mumbled, whether to himself or to Riku it was unclear, but he sounded sincerely miserable and misunderstood and Riku didn't like how that made him feel...horrible.

He blinked a few times, then threw his hands into the air, exasperated. "We're _not dating_!" he cried, and Roxas glanced up at him through a few strands of hair with a thoroughly startled look on his face.

"What...?" he began, dubiously, but out of the blue—or, on this particular day, the gray—came Kairi, all flustered giggles and weak grins to Roxas's rescue with a hand clutching onto his. Riku let his arms drop limply to his sides and he glared at her skeptically, mouth hanging gently slack. She had a very imposing way of intruding right at the most awkward moments, as though she didn't trust anyone else to fix their own problems. It was getting on his nerves, too. All these fucking freshmen were getting on his nerves.

"Let's go home," Kairi urged, pulling Roxas away. He stumbled after her in silence, brows furrowed.

And Riku really didn't know what to do. Part of him wanted to apologize, to concede and just go with the flow, but another part of him wanted to just shake this new kid out and Sora back in.

Luckily, it didn't matter what he did, because Kairi stopped moving away and craned back towards the boy with the platinum hair, offering him the most rueful frown she could muster. "I'm sorry," she said, but beneath her remorse, there was an obvious disappointment in Riku's management of the spat. The notion was echoed in her eyes, sharp and stuck in the middle, but then she sighed and turned away, and the three freshmen left without any more ruckus.

He didn't want to feel guilty. Really, he didn't. That was stupid. Roxas had been nothing but arguments since he'd met him, and Riku wasn't going to just let him win when it was unfair. Sagging down, he sat on the parking block and let his fingers dangle between his shins, concentrating on the gravel beneath his cleats.

"Hey, man, having some girl trouble?"

He cast a glance upwards and found Wakka standing beside him, his soccer ball secure in the nook of his elbow and waist. He was grinning, like he always was, affable even when he was pissed. Overhead, evening was crawling into the clouds and the pale gray was becoming darker. Most of the team had dwindled off; back on the field, Zidane was helping Coach Highwind pack up equipment, and Cloud and Leon had arrived as Zidane's ride home and were both currently leaning against a Toyota across the parking lot with Tidus elaborating something vociferously in their midst.

A cold breeze was beginning to pick up.

Riku didn't answer. He didn't answer because he didn't know what to say, because even if he did he wouldn't want to say it, but mainly he didn't answer because he realized he wasn't having _girl trouble_. He was having _boy trouble_.

Slumped on the parking block, he wondered how Wakka would react if he admitted that. _No, not girl trouble, Wakka. Boy trouble. Why? Because this boy that I really like just turned into a completely different boy, and I can't _stand_ this new boy but that makes me want to know him more, and even if he drives me up the wall, I have to love Roxas if I can ever hope to love Sora. Get it? Got it? Good._

Riku continued this inaudible proclamation by mentally bidding Wakka a good day, and Wakka blinked, still waiting for a possible reply of some sorts as Riku climbed to a stand and picked up his backpack.

"Hey," Wakka drawled, "are you gonna answer, or what?"

"Nah." Riku shrugged limply. "Can I have a ride home?"

The taller boy looked up at the sky, shifting his ball to the opposite hand as he squinted at the murky clouds. "Ahh...yeah, sure. It looks like it's gonna rain all night again, yeah?"

"Great. My yard will be a pond tomorrow morning."

Wakka regarded his teammate with a polite chuckle, then turned and cupped a hand to his mouth, calling, "Hey! Tidus! We're gonna go now!"

Riku's muscles were already beginning to ache. He had a feeling that he'd be tossing and turning all night.

* * *

Wednesday morning, he gave his mom a smile. He woke up knowing that his dad worked the later shift, and that would have made the day a Chef Riku day, but he tried not to think about that. Riku made his father a cup of coffee before he even asked him to and ate a bowl of cereal while he got dressed. The morning news broadcast was on and his dad watched it with a relatively abnormal silence, sipping his cup of coffee in something like muted contemplation.

"Do you want coffee, too?" he'd asked his mother as he discarded his bowl and spoon into the basin of the sink. She was at the table, serenely flipping through home décor magazines, and that in and of itself was melancholic enough.

"Yes," she replied, smiling faintly and holding her place with her index finger. For a moment afterwards, she'd looked confused, as though she wanted to perhaps say something more but chose not to and idly went back to looking through the magazine.

Riku made it just how she liked it, with little cream and no sugar, and when he handed it across the table to her, he gave her a smile. A tiny one, one barely credible, but his mother saw it and she blinked a few times, then took the offered mug of coffee and set it down on the tabletop. She looked at him like she wanted to feel his forehead again, and as Riku's smile faded and he remained standing across the table from her, he realized that she probably was a little concerned by his sudden disposition. He was a little worried, himself. He felt deflated and weary, but he was trying to be patient. He really was.

"Thanks, honey," his mom had said, and only that as she went back to looking at the furniture and accessories she'd only dream about.

Then Riku laced up his Converse, grabbed his backpack, said Good Bye to both parents, and left. It had indeed rained overnight and he avoided the swampy grass to instead descend the driveway; the gutters were close to overflowing and the nooks of the street where sidewalk met pavement were miniature rivers dwindling along towards their waterfall at the nearest sewer grate. The sun was out but the air had a bite to it, and clouds waited at the horizon to cast themselves throughout the sky as the day went on.

He wasn't feeling any different by fourth period—generally frustrated and impatient, and kind of lonesome now—and his teacher apparently found this quite interesting because as the bell rang and Riku followed the routine of every student before lunch, slamming books into bags and trying to get out of the desk and into the hallway in a swift, singular leap, Mr. Ryota called his name and waggled two fingers in the proverbial _Come hither_ motion.

"I noticed you forgot to turn in your study guide today," the man said after every student but the Hayate boy had gone, with a humble gesture at the stack of homework packets on the edge of his desk.

Riku frowned. "Oh. Right." He dropped his bag to the linoleum and unzipped it, searching his notebooks for the assignment. "Sorry. I didn't know you were collecting them today."

"Hnm," Mr. Ryota said, considering this. "Well, I asked for them at the beginning of the period, so..."

Riku slumped, peering up at his teacher from where he crouched on the classroom floor with his mouth in a thin line. Then he held the study guide up for the man to take. Mr. Ryota did so with a keen smile; he placed it casually with the rest of the stack and then asked in typical teacher fashion, "Is this class really that boring, Riku? That I lose you as soon as the bell rings?"

"No," Riku answered honestly enough, zipping up his bag and standing again. "Just...tired, I guess."

Mr. Ryota climbed from his chair, skirting around his desk and patting his student on the shoulder. Riku would have preferred for him not to have done so, but Mr. Ryota was just all-around friendly like that, a relatively young man who wanted to be a pal as well as a teacher to every kid who entered his classroom. "Make sure you get some rest, then. It's that time of the year, hunh?"

"Yeah." He thought: _Why does everyone assume I'm sick?_

"I'll see you tomorrow, Riku."

"Mm-hnm."

At the doorway, Mr. Ryota turned to close up the classroom and Riku threaded both arms through the straps of his backpack, strolling down the hallway. It was reasonably dead by now, just as dead as it always was during lunchtime; below, the cafeteria would probably be bursting with the lunch line. He trudged down the hall towards the stairs, glancing out the window at the November sky and the students already congregating outside, many of which he guessed would be contemplating ditching.

It was as he turned to go to the stairs that he heard the voices of other students on the second floor with him. One of them was familiar. To his left was the mouth of the wide staircase, a broad window above it and some students seated at the foot of it, eating sandwiches and drinking Dr. Pepper, and to his right was a hall branching off to two dead ends of restrooms, storage closets, and lockers, and the voices came from that direction.

Hands in pockets, Riku turned to his right and strode down the hallway, away from the stairwell. He stopped at the corner and looked down towards the bathrooms, where there was a group of boys moderately close to a fight. And that was just what he'd expected, because the second floor was always pretty empty from twelve thirty-five to one o'clock and that was the perfect place to escape the eyes of faculty.

But what he hadn't expected was Roxas.

There were two other than him, one towering above him and beaming down at his indignations. The other was leaning up against the water fountain with folded arms and a crooked grin. Roxas's satchel backpack was on the floor, strewn up against the opposite wall. Riku stood at the corner in silence as he absorbed the scene in a matter of seconds, but even as he evaluated it, it kept playing without waiting for him to catch up.

Roxas was jabbing a finger at his enemy, demanding, "—Why don't you guys just fuck off, hunh? What's your problem with me, anyway?"

"I just asked if you had any quarters left from the vending machine," the tall one—Riku recognized him as one of the school's general assholes, Tov—retorted, and his comrade Reed snorted out laughter.

"I don't use the vending machines!" Roxas squalled. He was getting _pissed_. Riku considered stepping in—because he'd been in one or two fistfights and he knew Tov was aware of his general status of _good,_ as he'd been dubbed victorious in both altercations, and if he stepped in now, Tov and his lackey would understand that they shouldn't mess with Roxas at this particular moment because now Riku was on Roxas's side—but before he could decide, Roxas proved that he wasn't at all frightened of confrontation. He thrust his palms forward and gave Tov a rough shove.

Tov swayed. He laughed. He put his hands on his hips and stood in front of Roxas, Reed laughing along with him. Roxas was enraged all over again.

"What's the joke?! Hunh?" He gave Tov another shove. "What's so funny?" Another shove. More laughter, more swaying, taunting him. "I've told you guys so many times—I don't use the vending machine, I bring my lunch!" A third shove, hard enough to send Tov staggering backwards and Roxas stumbling forward. The taller student came to a stop against the wall, stayed there a moment staring at the freshman as though he didn't believe he'd really been knocked even remotely off balance by such a smaller boy, and then gritted his teeth and flung himself off the wall with complete intention of putting the dumb kid back in his place.

Riku felt the urge to rush forward and intervene, because even if Roxas could fight, he could never take Tov and Reed at the same time. He felt the need to step in again, and he felt the burst of adrenaline that followed, but he didn't even have a chance to move forward because abruptly Mr. Ryota zipped into the scene from somewhere behind him. He snagged Tov by his cocked arm and jerked him away from Roxas, who had been readying to block anything aimed his way.

"Alright, guys, seriously. Knock it off. Don't make me escort you to the office."

"Ryota—" Reed cried, pointing at Roxas, "—he pushed Tov, right into that wall!"

"He did, really, swear it on my life, and come on, that was all self-defense you saw—"

"That's a lie," Roxas spat, retrieving his backpack and draping it across his chest. He seemed abnormally calm, even when Tov sent him a threatening scoff, but Riku noticed his hands trembling ever so slightly.

"I don't care what happened, just as long as no one's _hurt_," Mr. Ryota proclaimed, and gave Tov one last jerk away from the other boy before releasing his arm. "Now get to lunch before I decide to report this."

Tov brushed himself off, shot one last glance at Roxas, then strode off with his buddy at his side hissing something beneath his breath. Mr. Ryota followed, not trusting them entirely to make it down to the cafeteria.

It was then that Roxas saw Riku. He froze, one hand clutching nervously at the strap of his messenger bag and the other buried in his hair, scratching at his temple. Hanging his head abruptly, he gawked at the toes of his Converse.

Riku blinked. He shifted his weight to the opposite foot, shrugged, and rolled his gaze around to peer down the hallway towards the stairwell. "What was that all about?" he mumbled after a moment of proper silence. Roxas didn't answer at first; Riku slid his eyes around to peer through his lashes at the other boy. He remained staring at his toes, then finally took a deep breath and sighed out:

"How long were you standing there?"

"Uh...like, right before you started pushing him."

"Oh." More silence. "Well, I mean, even if you _did_ jump in to help me, I wouldn't have needed it."

Today Roxas was wearing dark blue jeans and a black T-shirt with white sleeves and a white star on the left half of the torso (Riku fleetingly recognized it from that afternoon he'd snuck a peek into Sora's closet), and of course his checkered wristband. He hadn't been lying when he said he wore it every day. Roxas lifted his head, slowly at first, almost shyly, and then all the way, staring at Riku and waiting for him to say something more.

"What happened?" Riku tried again.

"I don't know." Roxas's brows furrowed. He frowned softly, glancing down at the linoleum in consideration of the question. Then he sighed again and murmured, "Tov and Reed always pick on me. I don't know why. It just started one day. They'll come and tease me about what I eat, or what I wear, or whatever... It's like a big joke to them and I don't know the fucking punch line."

Riku stared at him, sadly. In fact, he ached for him a little. Tov was a jerk—hell, a whopping _jackass_—but poking fun at someone because they had a personality disorder was just _heartless_. Roxas would never understand why they asked him for quarters; he'd never understand why they laughed at his ignorant answers; he'd never understand why people didn't understand _him_.

"What?" Roxas asked, frowning further. "You're staring."

"Ah...sorry, Roxas." Riku motioned with his shoulder for the freshman to follow him. "Let's go eat lunch, alright?"

"Are you going to sit with me?"

"...Yeah. Why not."

Roxas smiled, and it was a smile that was so different from Sora's that Riku could have really believed that Roxas was someone physically separate. He walked at first a few paces behind Riku, then a bit closer, and a little more, until he was right beside him and letting his fingertips brush against Riku's. Riku carefully made sure his hand didn't respond, just walking, just counting the steps until the stairs would be in front of him, and all he could think was, _Kairi, why aren't you interrupting yet?_

* * *

"How are you today, Roxas?"

"I'm fine. How are you?"

"Just great. Go ahead and sit down right there."

"Alright."

The door closed on the hallway to Mr. Ling's office, a diminutive corridor which led away to the lobby where his mom was probably standing at the window, arms crossed and squeezing her purse so tight that she'd leave indents in the worn-in vinyl with her fingernails while she and the receptionist spoke in soft, curt tones about the day and the weather and other mundane items. Back in Mr. Ling's office, it was quiet and secluded, always a little dim with one lamp in the corner and the red and brown color scheme. Roxas watched as Mr. Ling took off his jacket and draped it on the back of his chair, then sat down at the desk and smiled merrily at his patient.

"So, Roxas. First question I always ask, right?"

Roxas nodded, shifting in the chair across the room.

"Do you remember yet?"

The ticking of the clock was overly loud. He felt a headache waiting timidly at his temples, biding its time until it could clamp onto his skull and pound. It smelled like cinnamon, sharp and sweet, like it did every appointment; Mr. Ling burned the same candle every time he walked into the room. Maybe he burned it non-stop. It always seemed to replenish itself right when Roxas thought it might be done for.

"No," he replied, frowning softly and picking at his cuticles with an absent glance around the room. Mr. Ling had numerous degrees displayed proudly in neat, clean frames. They paraded along the wall behind his desk; Roxas's gaze danced from plaque to plaque before settling on the therapist's smile. It had suddenly turned pensive. The man's hands were folded loosely on the surface of his desk, Roxas's personal folder beneath his palms. A steno pad and pen sat simply the flick of a wrist away. Lying atop the notepad, just sitting there as if mocking the boy across from it, was a small cassette player. Roxas knew what tape was in it.

Mr. Ling followed Roxas's gaze, cleared his throat, and let his smile fade away as the fourteen-year-old looked back to him quickly. He slumped in the big black chair with polished wooden legs, staring back at the therapist with gloom written into every shadow of his face. Mr. Ling tapped the cassette player with one finger, respectfully.

"Do you want to try, first thing?"

"I don't want to try at all. I just want to talk," Roxas insisted with a pinched frown. After a moment of silence, he curled into a meek smile and added, "I've got a lot to talk about."

"Oh, have you now?"

"Yes."

Mr. Ling moved the cassette player off the steno pad and picked up his pen, popping the cap off with his thumb and letting it rest where it fell. Roxas eyed his movements vigilantly, as he always did, paying close attention to what the man did. Mr. Ling leaned back in his chair, getting comfortable as he wrote the date at the top of the empty yellow paper.

"Roxas," the man frowned, faintly saddened that Roxas still didn't trust him completely, "you know that I only take notes to see if I can help you out, not to snitch on you. It's called confidentiality."

"I know."

"Okay, then."

"It just makes me a little uncomfortable."

"That's understandable. It's for your own good, though."

"Kairi and I talked on the phone for three hours straight yesterday."

"Is that so?"

Roxas laced his fingers limply atop his stomach, elbows propped on the arms of the chair. Tilting his head back, he peered up at the ceiling and sighed, relaxing against the leather. "Yeah. See, I came to on Saturday. Just woke up. Checked the date and found out that I'd blacked out for almost _two months_. Can you believe that? That kind of scared me."

"Don't be scared. Every time I've seen you in the last few weeks, you've been just fine. What else happened?"

"Got dressed, brushed my teeth, did my hair, ate breakfast with my mom."

"How is she doing?"

"She was really tired that morning. Looked worn out, or sick or something. She didn't eat, she only drank coffee, and she sat across from me wrapped in a blanket. I don't know, she seems to be doing better since then. Maybe she just had a long night. You know how that is."

"Yup, I do..."

"I made breakfast."

"What did you make?"

"Omelets."

"Sounds good."

"It was really good." Roxas's fingers tapped on each other as he observed them. "So, um, yeah, Mom worked again on Sunday." He frowned. "At Red Robin, I mean, not downtown. Kairi and I went to the mall on Sunday. I bought a smoothie for us to share, and I told her...that the last thing I remembered was the night of September 12. She sounded a little surprised, really."

"It's kind of a surprising thing to hear, you know? Just, out of the blue one day, 'Hey, I forgot everything that happened to me since this-and-that-date.' She seems like a good girl, though, so I bet she was fine about it anyway."

"Yeah, she's always fine about it... She told me that I had been okay, that I hadn't done anything I'd regret, that I had a test coming up on Tuesday. Stuff like that. She didn't tell me about Riku until Monday, though."

Mr. Ling looked up through his lashes while his hand finished the last of his sentence, scratching away at the steno pad. "Riku," he echoed. "And who's that?"

Roxas stared at the therapist, blinked a few times, squirmed uncomfortably, and then announced, "Well, apparently he's my boyfriend."

Mr. Ling stopped writing. Brows risen, a small, incredulous smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Oh?" he asked. "Your boyfriend?"

"Um..." Roxas's brows furrowed. He wiggled in the chair again, discomfited, then glanced at the clock. Damn, another forty minutes left? "...Yeah. My boyfriend. I mean, I had no idea I was..._you know_, but..."

"Nothing wrong with it."

"We met at lunch. It was kind of crazy. He was being a jerk and I was getting all defensive because he was creeping me out, but then Kairi broke it up just before we really started arguing. She explained that Riku was my boyfriend and was just panicking because I didn't remember him, that Riku didn't know about my black-outs so she had to tell him. I said, 'WHAT? Are you KIDDING me?' And Kairi said, 'No, no, really, you guys are going out. Just met a little bit ago. He REALLY likes you, Roxas.'"

The boy stopped to take a slow breath. He could feel himself blushing. He was bright red, he just _knew _it. He gawked at his therapist as though he expected some kind of typical adult skepticism or judgment of his tale; that was how they always viewed kids—ignorantly. Roxas hated it.

But Mr. Ling was silent. He continued writing as fast as his hand could manage. "Go on," he mumbled after a moment, concentrating fully on getting everything down.

"...Okay. Ah, well, being around him is kind of tense. I think that's just how he is, though."

"Have you done anything with him as of yet?"

Roxas felt his blush deepen and he looked back up at the ceiling, embarrassed by such a question. "Ah, no. Nothing. I think. Not that I can remember." He paused, tapped the toes of his shoes on the carpet. It was too quiet in the room. Licking his lips, he broke the hush with a weak murmur: "I really like him. I don't know why—but I guess you never know why, you just _feel_ for someone. And that's the only way I can explain it. I just like him. The way I feel around him feels familiar and yet not, and I feel really..._right_. You know?"

"Oh, yes, it's a wonderful feeling, isn't it?" Mr. Ling scribbled over a few words and rephrased them, brows raising as he looked up at the boy across the room. "So, Kairi told you that you've interacted with him..._before_ you came to?"

"Yeah."

"For how long?"

"Don't know. She said a few weeks." A notion dawned on Roxas then; looking inquisitively at Mr. Ling, he asked, "I've never mentioned him before?"

"No, not at all..." The therapist flipped back the first filled page of his notepad and began the next. "I'm glad for you, though, Roxas."

A silence filled the small office for the next five minutes (Roxas counted them, half-watching the clock and half-thinking about Riku now that the thoughts had been nudged into motion) as Mr. Ling hurried to finish writing. When he'd done so, he dropped the steno pad and pen, folded his hands behind his neck, leaned back in his chair and inquired, "So, do you want to try to remember today or not?"

Roxas flicked his gaze back to the man at the desk. Then he looked at the cassette player, staring at it as though he might really be able to intimidate it into malfunctioning, then looked back at the therapist's friendly smile.

"Not really," Roxas breathed out gingerly. "...Sometimes I feel like every time I try to remember, I black out again. For a long time. And I...I don't want to do that. I don't want to miss out on important things, and Riku is definitely an important thing."

Mr. Ling nodded slowly, regarding his patient curiously. Sighing through his nose, he shifted forward and dusted his fingertips along the face of the manila folder marked _Kaimana, S/R_. "You know that I can't force you into hypnosis, Roxas, but I think it would definitely be helpful."

Roxas's brows furrowed. He straightened up and crossed his arms, peering at the man behind the desk with an adamant frown. "I don't want to do it today," he reiterated, as gently as he could to still get his point across. He was well aware that no matter how much Mr. Ling thought they _should_ do the hypnosis, if Roxas refused, they _couldn't_.

Mr. Ling regarded the determined fourteen-year-old, examining him from head to toe as his fingers eventually stopped sweeping the smooth surface of Roxas and Sora's file. "Alright," he finally conceded. "That's fine."

Roxas relaxed.

* * *

In the lobby, the receptionist—her name was Ren Kayoto but everyone referred to her as Birdie due to her first name and its homophone—had gotten a cup of coffee from the lounge for the lone mother in the waiting room and had joined her on the sofa there. When Roxas and Mr. Ling emerged from the hallway to his office, Yuuko Kaimana straightened up attentively, forgetting the conversation she'd been holding with Ms. Kayoto, and beamed expectantly at her son. He blinked a few times in return. Yuuko looked to the doctor following him out, and at that glance she seemed to lag a bit behind—but after a moment she understood. She deflated gently, gripping her cup of coffee just a little tighter as she looked back to her child.

Roxas avoided her gaze and wandered around to the broad window facade of the waiting room; it overlooked the city below from five stories up, and he always loved looking down from such height. Directly beneath was the busy street and the entrance to the building, and across were the faces of more buildings, dwindling away into the horizon as smaller buildings of more common business types. The sky cast a shadow over everything; it was about six o'clock by now, and winter days were always shorter anyway.

Mr. Ling motioned for Yuuko, his steno pad and her son's file in his hands. Birdie Kayoto took the hint and gave Yuuko a smile, swinging up off the couch and readjusting her blouse as she strode back to her desk.

Glancing at her son—who had settled quite contentedly at the window, hands in his pockets and examining the gray evening outside—Yuuko stood up, hooking her purse on her shoulder as she followed the therapist into the hallway a few steps. Her back to the waiting room and her brow creased, she licked her lips and opened her mouth to ask why the man had pulled her aside. But he beat her to it, smiling at her humbly.

"How are you, Mrs. Kaimana?"

"Ah..." The woman trailed away for a moment, slightly thrown off her train of thought by the polite interference, before she regained her composure and smiled thinly in return. "Please—Yuuko is fine, I swear. And, well, I'm getting by. How are you?"

"Just fine." Mr. Ling shifted, nodding absently as he flipped the manila folder open, paper-clipped stack of papers with _Roxas_ on the first sheet at the front, and then placed the steno pad atop this before looking back up at Mrs. Kaimana. "I just wanted to bring something to your attention."

"Oh, God," Yuuko breathed, brows knotting further. That simply was something she didn't want to hear in that tone, especially not from her son's therapist. "What do you mean?"

"Don't worry, it's nothing too serious. It's just that Roxas wouldn't comply to the hypnosis," the man explained in a low voice, making sure to keep the discussion in the hallway. "Normally he would have wanted to try, but tonight he refused because he has an emotional tie to remaining conscious."

"Hunh...?" Yuuko squeezed the straps of her purse anxiously, still half a thought behind. "What are you talking about? He won't do it?"

"He's afraid of losing consciousness again."

"But he's not even—" She caught herself before she finished the sentence, pressing her lips into a wan line. Closing her eyes, she took a slow breath, then peered at the doctor through her lashes. "I can see why he'd be afraid, but...what do you mean by 'emotional tie'?"

"He has a...new friend that he wants to remember spending time with," Mr. Ling explained.

"Kairi never stopped him—"

"This new friend means a lot to him. He told me that he won't try to remember because he feels that if he does, he'll black out and he won't remember being with him."

Yuuko was silenced. Plucking at the seam of her purse neurotically, she licked her lips a few times before the sentences registered fully in her mind. "Oh, so he finally has a boy friend now?" she asked, more to herself than to the therapist. Mr. Ling blinked briefly, regarding the young mother curiously. He wasn't entirely sure if she comprehended what she'd just said, or the fact that she had been more than correct, but he wasn't going to point anything out to her. There was a fine line between helping and tattling.

"His name is Riku. I think you should talk to him about it, maybe persuade him into trying the hypnosis?"

Mrs. Kaimana swallowed, head sagging down to rest in her free hand, delicately. "I just...you don't understand, Dr. Ling. I can't just force him into doing that—he's like another son to me—"

"Yuuko, he's just another _part_ of your son. There's no separation between the two, even though they might think so. There's only one of him. It's an identity disorder. He's coming to me for hypnotherapy to fix that, and to do so, I've got to be able to _do_ the hypnosis. Do you get how that works?"

Yuuko lowered her hand from her temples and peered at the man in scrutiny, lips pressed together tautly. She knew that he was right—he was certified to be right—but she just didn't understand how he could be so apathetic about it. This was her son, her baby boy, her own flesh and blood—not some totally unrelated patient she could merely brush off as soon as the therapy session was over.

"I get it," Mrs. Kaimana murmured. She straightened up, smoothed down her shirt, tried to look a little more professional than her jeans and ponytail would allow. "I'll talk to him about it."

"I know it's difficult because we're trying to cater to both, but you remember how Roxas reacted to the idea of being an alter."

"God, that was so long ago..."

"Talk to him about it."

She nodded, turning halfway to signal that she was ready to end the discussion. "It's just hard to grasp as a mother," Yuuko finalized tersely, giving Mr. Ling a brisk, polite smile. He closed the manila folder over the steno pad and bobbed his head courteously as the woman strode across the waiting room to join her son at the window, tucking the boy's patient file against his side.

"Roxas," the therapist called; both Yuuko and Roxas turned their immediate attention to him. Mr. Ling smiled at both. "How's next Tuesday sound for you?"

Roxas shrugged, flicking his gaze back out the window. Yuuko frowned, exhaling heavily; she gently rubbed her palm along Roxas's back in a soothing swirl, hoping she could comfort him at least a little. "Tuesday sounds fine," she replied for him, and gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

* * *

**A/N:**

**(10.27, a few days after posting): Holy crap. I didn't realize this chapter was so sloppy when I put it up. My apologies, to everyone.**

**Minor edits made to Chapter Five to make it a little more comprehensible. No changes made to the content; I just reworded a few things to make it run a little smoother. Thanks to all who dealt with it beforehand. **

**If it comes to anyone's awareness that I have portrayed anything as far as the disorder/hypnotherapy inaccurately (of course writing something from research and not from personal experience is always going to be a little more tricky), please let me know and I'll be sure to correct it. **

**Other than that, sorry for the one-night delay in updates. But I bet no one even noticed. -wink.-**


	7. Language Lessons

_**Candy Boy**_

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the amazing franchise © Disney and Square Enix; everything else © their rightful owners.**

**Ratings/Warnings: M—profanity, graphic themes, AU **

* * *

_Chapter Seven_

* * *

Traverse City wasn't the biggest city on the map at nearly 52,000 people, excluding those who commuted to school and work, but it was big enough to reside in without ever having to leave city limits and still growing. Everything needed was in reach, from the western end where the business district met the coast with companies, hotels, and apartments to the eastern end where there were still a few folksy cobblestone streets and alleyways between tall, narrow buildings. Surrounding these and scattered into the north and south were quickly spreading, smaller commercial businesses and various neighborhoods fitting into one of three classes: Good, Bad, or Run-Down.

The newer housing developments going up near the coast and downtown were Good; the wealthier streets that made a recognized border between the western half and the eastern half of the city were Good.

Riku lived in one of the neighborhoods referred to as Run-Down, a step up from trash but not yet middle-class. It was a neighborhood between the eastern end and the center, where the lights and traffic of the city died into the corner of Rhine and Fourth and disappeared into houses that slowly got worse and worse the further you explored their streets.

Tidus, on the other hand, lived in one of Traverse City's two Bad neighborhoods, a collection of houses and roads to the southwest whose gateway was the bleak gray overpass that led one to the coast. The second Bad neighborhood was to the north, but the two looked remarkably the same—little houses with green lawns and petite trees, yet despite the quaint look to both of them there was an unpromisingly tense atmosphere. It wasn't Tidus's family that created the mold there, unlike Riku's household; for Tidus, it was the circumstances. His mom and dad hadn't had the best of luck when it came to money and employment, so they had struggled to stay on their feet for years. The tiny brick house on 43rd Street was the best they could do.

There were distinctions between Riku and Tidus's neighborhoods, making Run-Down a completely different concept from Bad. Riku's neighborhood was littered with abandoned pieces of life, from broken bottles to trashed furniture to that box of Christmas tree ornaments he'd seen on the curb last July. It was less manicured, simply because no one cared to pay more attention than the utility bills, while Tidus's neighborhood was filled not with apathy but with desperation. Desperate people trying to get more than what they'd been given in any way available, illegal or not; desperate wives trying to make their homes look better than low-income, desperate husbands working long hours to supply for their family and their bills, and desperate kids forced out of childhood too early, tasting the world's many sinful sweets late at night with other forsaken youth.

Desperation was the deciding factor between their two neighborhoods, what one lacked and the other drowned in. Tidus's family and Riku's family were prime examples of the differences—one wanted to be better and the other did not.

And because of that, Riku sometimes wished he lived in Tidus's neighborhood, even if people called it Bad because of the circumstances. Tidus had told him that it wasn't all that great; that once, in the eighth grade, he stood on the corner of 39th and 40th, sharing a cigarette with Leon (who happened to live on E 35th Avenue, just a few backyard dashes from Tidus's house) as some of their pals TP'd the home of an old woman who'd lost her husband two years prior. They'd found out soon after that she'd passed away a week later, and that was when Tidus convinced Leon to ditch those classic Bad neighborhood delinquents and join him with cooler kids. It was also, he assured Riku with more passion than Riku really cared about, the last time he'd touched anything off-limits to minors.

That corner was also the one where Tidus and Riku sat on a blustery November Thursday evening, hunched on the curb as the wind tossed their hair and the signs above their heads proclaimed 39th and 40th and they drank hot chocolate and scowled at the world.

"You know..." Riku announced, peering at the steaming drink in his hands, then side-glancing at the blond beside him, "we didn't have to come all the way up here just to talk privately. Your room could have sufficed."

Tidus laughed, weakly. "I know, but I like doing this. I always have. Sitting out in the cold with hot chocolate."

"Glad to share such a fond memory."

"Shut up. I'm still a little pissed at you."

"Sorry," Riku grunted, smirking dimly as he shifted on the cold concrete and took a sip of the hot cocoa. It was in a white mug, one of the simple Swiss Miss packets mixed into hot milk, but the chill of the November air made it taste deliciously rich and soothing. Although it was a strange habit, Tidus knew what he was doing.

"So..." Tidus trailed off, plucking a pebble off the street and tossing it up into the air, catching it, and tossing it again. "...Let's talk. What's going on?"

"Nothing. What do you mean?"

"Bull!" Tidus exclaimed, but it wasn't malicious in the least; in fact, he laughed loudly, giving Riku a toothy smile. "That is so complete bullshit, man. I know it's been a few days since I told you that our discussion would be finished, but Jesus, Riku, did you forget that I _know_ something is up?"

Riku shook his head, wagging it back and forth limply with a light grin spreading across his own face. Tidus's mirth could just be so damn contagious sometimes. After a moment, he faded into a faint smile, running his thumb along the rim of the mug in his hands. Then he murmured, "You and Wakka were the only ones keeping me at that table, you know."

"I figured as much."

"Yeah."

"Hell, I _know_ that Leon can be a jerk sometimes. And so can Cloud. Tifa is just controlling, Yuffie is loud, Aerith... No, Aerith is fine, and so is Zidane. Zidane and I get along great."

"I know, but... Isn't there someone you'd rather sit with than at that table?"

Tidus cocked his head back, staring up into the dark sky overhead. Clouds twisted through it, making the evening just a bit darker than usual. "Um...I dunno. What do you mean?"

"Say you liked some girl. You'd want to sit by her, not with everyone else, right?"

"Well, I'd probably just get her to sit with me _with_ everyone else, but—" Tidus cut off, looking to Riku quickly. His eyes sparkled with good-natured scandal, face splitting into a broad grin. "You like someone?"

Riku froze. He took a deep breath, let it out into his hot chocolate before taking a sip, then hunched forward and thought pointedly: _And this is EXACTLY why I should just stay quiet in the first place._ Knowing he had no choice now but to answer Tidus—who was staring at him intently, attention never faltering, remarkably more perceptive than he really appeared to be—Riku glanced to him through the hair framing his face, glistening in the light from the street lamps and the moon hidden somewhere above them. Drawing his lips into a firm line, Riku shrugged.

Tidus took that as a Yes. "Is it that girl?"

Riku tensed automatically, knowing that "that girl" meant Kairi. He uttered an abrupt, caustic laugh, almost snorting on his hot chocolate. "Uh, _no_. Definitely not." _Definitely not Kairi. No, no, no, and do you know why, Tidus? Because in eighth grade, while you were smoking those first and last cigarettes with Leon, or contributing to the neighborhood delinquency with your unparalleled cleverness or something, I was hanging with Wakka and his old buddies, and Kairi_...

* * *

_...Kairi gripped the straps of her backpack anxiously, brows furrowed and mouth skewed in a tight, troubled frown. Selphie was next to her, chewing bubble-gum rather loudly and examining her pink and green shoelaces to make sure they were still as neatly tied as they had been this morning. Sora was absent; he had a doctor's appointment or something at noon so his mom had kept him out of class all day. He'd told Kairi all about it last night on the phone, told her that it had to do with his dad and his health, that he and his mom were going downtown and after the appointment they were going to eat out together and maybe even get some ice cream. Something like that. _

_Kairi shifted a little, tilting her head without losing sight of the boys gathered against the corner of the school. Selphie blew a bubble and it popped after a moment of dangerous growth; she pulled the gum back into her mouth with an expert tongue. _

"_Are you gonna go ask, or what, Kairi?" _

_Kairi let out a breath she hadn't even known she'd been holding. "Uhh...yes. In a second."_

"_Well, you'd better hurry."_

"_Shh," Kairi demanded, glancing sharply over her shoulder at the brunette girl. Selphie frowned softly and glanced away. Kairi looked back towards the eighth graders beside the brick corner of the middle school building, where the schoolyard met chain-link fence. She took another deep breath; this was the first time she'd ever attempted anything of the sorts, and it was sure nerve-wracking. She hoped she wouldn't seem shallow or fake—or worse yet, slutty. But she wouldn't seem that way at all...she was just freaking out, right? _

Calm down, Kairi. Calm down... Nothing to it. Nothing at all.

"_Kaaairiiii," Selphie chirped, tapping her toe. "You've been waiting forever, so why don't you just GO already—"_

_Kairi did. She started walking, along the pavement of the middle school basketball courts, treading her way calmly to the far corner of the building where the boys were. As she walked, she mentally went over each of their names, just so that she was positive she was ready to interact with them—Wakka, his brother Chappu, Keepa, Datto, Letty...and Riku. They were just loitering the corner, waiting for the bell to signal release from seventh period gym class—Datto leaning against the chain-link fence with absent interest settled on Keepa and Letty, who were crouched beside each other and playing a quick round of cards on the blacktop, Chappu between Wakka and Riku against the brick wall, exchanging sticks of chewing gum. Fleetingly, Kairi thought, _A lot of people like gum. I don't. _But then she was in front of them and they were all looking at her curiously and she opened her mouth and all that came out was: _

"_Hi." _

_They echoed off polite "Hey"s, regarding the opposite sex standing before them with a strained, awkward homage—mainly because girls were still slightly ambiguous to them, especially when random ones just walked up and said "Hi", but also because this random girl in particular was a seventh grader and therefore commonly inferior. _

_Wakka nudged Chappu, who nudged Riku, who got the message delivered via bony adolescent elbows, and gave Kairi a crooked smile, brows raised invitingly. _

"_What's up?" he asked, and he could feel the rest of his friends' thoughts, vibes sent his direction with boyish fervor. Kairi seemed to come to life at his question, straightening up and spreading into a bright smile. _

"_Nothing. You?" _

_Riku shrugged, rolling his gaze around his group of friends. Settling it on Wakka for a moment, they stared at each other as if they were sharing a mental discussion about the girl standing right in front of them. Then the eighth grader in question tossed silvery bangs out of his eyes, grinned at Kairi (she near to melted at that, victim of hormones), and pulled a spare stick of gum out of his back pocket. _

"_Want gum?" Riku asked, brows raising a bit further and his grin broadening crookedly. "It's spearmint." _

"_...Nah," Kairi replied, smile turning sheepish. "I don't really like gum." _

"_Oh." Riku slipped both hands into his front pockets, nodding in acceptance of this personal choice. He tilted his head as he continued to grin at her, his hair falling into his eyes at such an angle that intensified them, sharp aquamarine that froze the seventh grade girl right where she stood._

_Then she remembered why she was there and she managed to get the words out in a reasonably level breath._

"_Riku, I was wondering if you wanted to hang out or something this Friday."_

_In the midst of the boys, Wakka grunted incredulously. The card game on the pavement was suddenly forgotten as Keepa and Letty turned their immediate attention upwards, and Datto and Chappu stared, not quite knowing whether to scoff or admire. Riku blinked a few times, grin slowly dying away into a skeptical half-quirk of the mouth. _

"_Like...a date?"_

_Kairi smiled, unable to control the reflex, and giggled innocently. Briefly, she hoped she sounded cute, not provocative. "Yeah, a date," she confirmed, casting Riku a glance below her lashes. Suddenly she wasn't feeling quite so shy anymore. Riku looked so serious, so that had to mean he was honestly considering it. She just knew it._

"_I..." Riku shrugged. "Sorry, but I think dating in school is stupid." _

"_Yeah," Datto interjected, and both Riku and Kairi shot him equally bothered glimpses. He continued, regardless. "You guys'll probably just break up after a week, anyway." _

_Riku shrugged again, not necessarily disagreeing with his friend. Looking to Kairi impassively, he finalized, "I just think it's too petty."_

_Kairi's lips hung gently slack as she tried to digest the rejection and still maintain a sturdy pride, one that if anything was severely bruised. "Yeah," she responded, and now instead of feeling confident, she just felt pathetic. "That's understandable."_

"_Okay, then." Riku nodded curtly. "See ya." And he waved with the stick of gum secured beneath two fingers. One of the other boys snorted into a raspy chuckle and Kairi thought that maybe her face was on fire. _

"_Yeah, see ya," she replied, and it sounded bright and cheerful, just like she was positive her smile was. She strutted away with her head held high and that same smile on her face, and when Selphie asked her if she had a date on Friday, Kairi told her she felt that dating in school was pointless. _

"_Why waste your time on someone when you'll probably just break up in a week, anyway?" she justified. Selphie agreed whole-heartedly as the bell rang and they joined their other friends, hurrying out of the fenced-in schoolyard to the buses waiting out front. _

_Kairi only cried for a minute or two, while she folded the laundry for her mom, and that was only because she didn't understand why she'd tried in the first place. _

* * *

"No, it's not that girl," Riku reiterated into the silence, really more because he wondered now why Kairi acted like eighth grade had never happened, but also just to make sure Tidus understood.

Tidus found the pebble he'd been tossing and began his game of one-man catch again. "Is it that boy?" he asked, inquiring in flippant accordance to the faces he saw in his head. A smile perked at his mouth, as he found the question kind of funny because he already knew the answer and was waiting merrily for Riku to explode in straight teenage male opposition to the very idea, but presently all that was happening was a silence and his frivolous grin.

Tidus caught his pebble and looked at Riku, brows slowly climbing up his forehead as he searched the pale face beside him for the icy glare that could definitely be sufficient of an outburst. But Riku only stared back, gravely, then slowly turned and peered forward as he took a long sip of his hot chocolate. Tidus tossed the rock up in the air absently, smile fading away into a quizzical expression, and as the silence stretched on it finally hit him.

"Oh—" he breathed, eyes widening in recognition, but then his pebble fell right into his hot chocolate with a perfect little _plink!_ and Tidus cried, "Oh!" Scowling harshly, he hunched over his mug, squinting into the shadowy drink but unable to see a single thing. "DAMMIT!" he howled, stomping his foot.

Riku blinked obliviously (he figured that Tidus had successfully distracted himself from his own question), licking his lips. "What?"

"My rock just went into my hot chocolate!"

"Tidus, shut up. God, you're loud..."

"RRGH!"

"Dude, their light just went on—_shut up_."

Tidus leaned forward, dumping his mug of hot cocoa out into the street. "Watch your feet," he grumbled, and both boys simultaneously lifted their legs, propping their heels on the edge of the curb. Riku stretched back, supporting himself with his free arm and snickering into his own hot chocolate, shaking his head; Tidus hugged his chest to his thighs, glaring as his wasted drink pooled out along the street, trickling down the slope of the road. It was still steaming.

* * *

Roxas was laughing, and it made Riku's defenses weaken ever so slightly. It was as perfect as Sora's laughter but different, somehow more light and subtle than the other's childishly slapdash mirth. Roxas's eyes slit and his face broke into a smile and he leaned back as he laughed the hardest and forward as he calmed down, elbows tucked into his sides as he gripped the edge of the table for stability.

"Kairi, you _said_ that to her?" Roxas managed as he tried to catch his breath, slumping against the table. "And you didn't get in trouble?"

"What else was I supposed to say?" Kairi still giggled shrilly, her indigo eyes pretty little crescents in her face because of the intensity of her grin. "She asked me what I was talking about, and I told her exactly what I said to Yuna."

Riku lifted his sandwich and examined it from the underside up, frowning observantly. Roxas and Kairi started laughing hysterically again and he glanced at them from between his arms and below his sandwich, curiously; he didn't understand why they were laughing so hard. Kairi had just repeated a swear word to her teacher and didn't get sent to the office for it. What was so hilarious about that?

But Roxas's laughter was so...exhilarating. It was new and definitely unfamiliar, and despite having been around him for a week, Riku hadn't really heard him honestly _laugh_ yet, so maybe that was why it made him so flustered. It also made him entirely lonesome for that certain laughter that sent shivers snaking up and down his spine and a grin cracking across his face, but hey, whatever.

Dropping his sandwich back to the tray before him, he decided that it was indeed edible, even with a slightly soggy bun, and opened up his carton of milk, taking a long sip of it as he peered at the freshmen sitting opposite him. Selphie wasn't there; he could at least be thankful for that. Kairi wasn't eating anything (he found over the last week or two that she never did) and Roxas had a cup of shrimp-flavored ramen, but they shared a bottle of Nesquik.

Roxas twirled some noodles on his plastic fork and blew on them, gaze flickering up to meet Riku's. Riku didn't look away; he licked his lips, setting his milk down, and raised his brows in silent inquisition.

Roxas grinned softly in return, then ate his forkful of ramen and glanced elsewhere demurely. His left hand, always crowned by that checkered wristband, lay in the middle of the table, just a few inches away from Riku's right knuckles. Riku considered this for a moment, then tossed away the thought and began eating his lunch.

Kairi sighed absently, tapping her fingernails on the tabletop. They'd changed colors, now a nice, neat blue instead of pink. Her bracelets danced against the surface of the lunch table, creating a little rhythm almost like the tintinnabulation of bells. Riku watched her from the corner of his eyes, remembering again that she had changed somehow from that afternoon in middle school.

His gaze shifted over to examine Roxas again, through his lashes and as discreetly as possible. He didn't want anyone to think he was checking him out or anything, but in a technical way, he kind of was. Roxas was wearing another band T-shirt—black, of course—and Riku knew from earlier movements that beneath the table he'd see gray jeans with holes in both knees. Sometimes, just looking at Roxas (he'd _just looked _quite a few times in the last seven days), he really had trouble believing that it was only Sora. Of course, he recognized the features; a person couldn't change their face. But Roxas had a way of making Riku backtrack fervently, making connections between things he'd never even found relevant before.

And suddenly Riku felt very superficial, sitting there and watching Roxas while Roxas sat there thinking that his boyfriend sat across from him, and before Riku comprehended the fact that he wanted to honestly give Roxas a chance, he opened his mouth and announced, "Hey, Roxas, I'll walk you home today."

Roxas stopped mid-slurp, a few ramen noodles dangling off his lower lip and entwined around the prongs of his fork. He blinked at Riku, a bit startled. The table was silent; even the jangling of Kairi's bracelets had halted, which must have meant that she'd stopped and was staring, also.

Roxas abruptly became rather flustered, glancing around the cafeteria rapidly as he shoved the rest of his mouthful in and tried to chew and swallow without biting his tongue or choking. Successful with that, he finally focused his skittery gaze upon Riku and blinked again. His eyes were candid and open, framed by dark lashes—Riku froze for a split-second, almost melted into a smile, but then he remembered that just because Roxas's eyes looked like Sora's, it didn't mean that Roxas had gone away.

"Okay," Roxas agreed calmly, leaning forward to prop his cheek in his palm. All traces of coy surprise had dissipated and what remained was his usual nonchalance, although his cheeks had flushed a faint pink. "That sounds cool."

And that was how Riku found himself standing inside the lobby of Fallridge Housing Complex, North Wing, First Floor, at the Kaimana door with Roxas at his side and hands in his pockets as he pretended he'd never been there before. That he didn't know the doorknob would give the freshman trouble for a few moments. That he didn't know that when he managed to open the door, the first thing they'd see would be the couch and the back of the television and the window of a nice, clean living room.

"Well," Roxas declared, smiling awkwardly and leading Riku into the house. He glanced over his shoulder at the lobbyman as he closed the front door behind the two. "It's not much, I know."

"Hnm." Riku shifted, dropping his backpack near the door and bending to untie his shoes. "You'd be surprised by my house, then."

Roxas laughed uneasily, taking off his satchel bag and placing it near the counter. "Oh," was all he could think of in reply to that, then suddenly felt quite inept in his hospitality and straightened up, looking to the sophomore quickly. "You can put your shoes—"

Riku blinked at him, standing in the middle of the living room, hands limp at his sides and looking rather guilty. And shoeless. Roxas cocked a brow, finishing his sentence as his gaze slid from Riku's white socks to the black Converse sitting neatly on the linoleum entryway. "—by the door. Um..." He chewed his lip, glancing back at his guest. "Have you been over here before, and I forgot?"

"No." Riku frowned, grasping for words to string together into an excuse that sounded relatively believable. "I just assumed... Good housekeeping and stuff. I didn't want to track anything in." _Smooth. That was smooth. It really was_.

"Okay," Roxas murmured, nodding slowly. Then he smiled, swinging open the fridge. "Thanks. That's really thoughtful. You know, if you stopped being such a blunt jerk, you might actually get along with more people."

Riku stared at Roxas as he propped his elbow atop the refrigerator door, unscrewing the cap of a water bottle. At the end of his rather cheeky advice, he grinned and took a sip of the water, brows risen, teasing him. Riku's frown deepened. He bit his tongue. It was incredibly hard, but he did it.

"Do you want a snack?"

"No."

"We can go watch TV."

"That's fine."

"I'm really sorry."

Riku stopped mid-turn, looking back into the kitchen were Roxas slumped in front of the fridge, head bowed down a bit but not fully hung, the miserable frown on his face still visible. Riku felt his heartstrings being plucked, normally so taut but as of late, so easily tugged. He frowned further, tilting his head gently. "What are you sorry about?"

Roxas peered at him, through his lashes, and his gaze was intense. For a moment Riku wondered whether he was going to answer or not, and just as he gave up and started moving towards the couch again, Roxas locked him in place once more by lifting his head and focusing his powerful stare on him. He swallowed and said, "I'm sorry...because I feel like I'm nothing but a hassle to you now."

Riku was truly taken aback. He opened his mouth to protest—and from where this kindhearted disagreement came, he wasn't sure—but Roxas continued.

"I really _am_ sorry that I didn't tell you about my black-outs. I don't know why I didn't, I honestly don't—I make sure _everyone_ knows." His fingers twisted together anxiously in front of him, picking and folding absently and Riku wanted to rip them apart from each other, hold them away by the wrists. But if he did that, it would be discomfiting. Too much too soon. Roxas licked his lips; his eyes shied away from Riku's momentarily, then shot back, suddenly unafraid again. "I don't want to ruin anything because I kept a stupid secret. Are we always this distant, or...?"

Riku gawked. He wasn't sure what else to do. Blinking a few times, brows furrowed, he finally managed to mumble, "No, I should be the one apologizing. If I'm making you feel uncomfortable like that, I mean." _God, what am I SAYING? Does it even matter?_

Roxas was silent a moment, staring back; they stayed like that for a long stretch of seconds, Riku stranded in the middle of the living room and Roxas lingering in the kitchen. But then he left the tile and joined the older boy on the carpet, and at that point Riku started towards the couch again. The hush ended precariously, as if it had been chopped off instead of mended.

Riku let his weight carry him down onto the sofa, leaning his head back against the blanket-covered cushion with his arms crossed. Roxas eased down beside him, then suddenly remembered he was still wearing his Converse and hunched forward, taking them off. Riku slid a shy glimpse at him from the corner of his eye, watching as thoughts paraded around his head with courses of their own and no present inclination for anything else. They raced through his mind relentlessly, creating a bewildering jumble of ideas—things from _Wow, Roxas is so different from Sora_ to _Why the fuck am I treating Roxas like he's a separate person? _to _I wonder if he'll like my food as much as Sora_, and even as far out as _I feel bad for hating Roxas_. After that one, Riku really didn't want to be victim of the silence any longer, so he shifted forward, elbows on his thighs, and decided, "Let's play a game."

Roxas threw his shoes across the living room to the linoleum threshold where they tumbled into the other pair there, then rose his brows at Riku. "What are you talking about?"

"Well," Riku explained, propping his chin in his palm, "since you feel like we've...become distant or something, let's get to know each other again."

After a moment of a mysteriously blank stare, Roxas's face very well lit up. "That's such a good idea, Riku."

Riku wanted to grin but his mouth rejected the expression. "Yeah, I know." Somehow, Roxas still understood that it was meant to be sarcasm, and he laughed softly as he tucked one leg up beneath the opposite thigh.

"Alright," the boy with the checkered wristband proclaimed, suddenly not as vexed as before, "you ask me a question, I'll answer. Then I'll ask _you_ and you'll answer, and so on and so forth."

"Sounds awesome."

"No lying."

"Of course."

"And no being a jerk."

"Would I—"

"You're being a jerk right now. Cut it out." Roxas laughed again, tucking both legs up beneath him now and leaning a bit closer, clearly getting more and more comfortable as Riku played along. Riku sighed, glancing down to his toes in search of some buoyancy, before flicking his gaze back up to meet Roxas's; he didn't really know when _he'd_ gotten comfortable around Roxas, but abruptly it was just so easy to relax. Maybe it was that laugh.

"First question." Riku held up one finger to emphasize. He considered what to ask, staring at his fingertip, and only one question popped to his head. "Do you like Swedish Fish?"

Roxas's nose wrinkled gingerly. "No. I'm not a candy guy."

Riku's hand sagged in the air. He frowned, felt as though someone had knocked him around a good number of times. "Oh...alright."

"Hnm..." Roxas tilted his head back, oblivious to Riku's sudden dejection; he slung an arm over the back of the couch as he stared at the ceiling in thought. "Mm, what kind of Hot Pockets do you like?"

"Uh...why?"

Roxas smirked lightly, craning forward a bit. His eyes were perfect little blue slits, his lashes obsidian. Riku swallowed. "Because," Roxas said, and his smirk became a blithe half-smile. "Because I was going to pop some Hot Pockets in the microwave for us later, and I was just wondering."

Riku frowned, leaning back and crossing his arms again, hooking one leg over the other loosely. "I can make dinner."

"...And I can just as easily make Hot Pockets." Roxas's expression soured away, brows furrowing.

"What if I _want_ to cook dinner?"

"Just forget it. I'm making Hot Pockets. Next question."

"...Fine with me. Tell me about your black-outs."

"Hunh? That's not a question."

"Roxas, I want to know about your black-outs."

"I can't explain them."

"Try."

"This is such an unfair question!"

"Why do you have them?"

"I can't remember."

"I think you might, if you really try."

"Riku, I _can't_."

"What happened with your dad?"

Roxas stopped balking. His palms were pressed to his temples, head hung low. A silence fell over the living room; Riku set both feet on the floor and peered at the younger boy, cautiously. He was afraid he'd broken him, as improbable as that was.

"Roxas...?"

"How did you know it was my dad?"

_Shit_.

Riku chewed his words for a split-second before deciding the truth was just as acceptable as any other white lie. "Kairi told me that you have...black-outs because of something that happened with your dad."

"I don't remember."

"Roxas, come on—"

"No, I'm serious." Roxas took a slow breath, lowering his hands to his lap and seeking out Riku's eyes for some kind of solidarity. Riku absently hoped that he could find it. "I don't remember exactly, just all these different flashes... Like my memory has holes in it or something. I hate it."

Riku frowned deeply, propping his elbow on the back of the couch and resting his cheek against his knuckles. Damn. He'd really thought he'd be able to gather another piece to the puzzle, but it seemed like every different path led to a dead end. "Sorry," he murmured. It was the only thing he could find to say.

Roxas cleared his throat, trying to move on to a different topic. "...My turn for a question."

"Yeah."

"Do you drink? Or smoke, or anything?"

"No."

Roxas blinked, leaning against the back of the couch and resting his arms atop his knees. "Wow. That was direct."

"I don't find it necessary. Now, go talk to the rest of my table and you'll probably get some different answers, but that's my truthful response. _No_."

Roxas smiled. "I admire that."

Riku nodded a bit, regarding him silently. Had he moved closer again? He smelled a little different, but it still faintly resembled Sora's scent. He probably just used another body spray or something. No big deal. Except that if he could smell the distinction, Roxas was way too close. "My question."

"Shoot."

"Why do you think we're..." God, it felt so weird to say it. "...going out?"

Roxas fell suddenly quiet. Riku peered at him through his lashes, honestly anticipating the reply. Roxas shifted slightly, shuffling his feet against the sofa cushions. "Um," he whispered, swallowed gently and began again, a bit louder. "Well, because you like me and I like you, right?" He frowned at Riku, grimly. "Why are you asking a question like that?"

"...I just want to know."

"Oh...?"

"You like me a lot, Roxas?"

Roxas stared dourly at the boy beside him, a hot blush blooming out into his cheeks. "I wouldn't be with someone otherwise." His frown bittered. "Isn't that what constitutes a relationship, being attracted to someone? See, it's hard for me because I don't even remember meeting you, and therefore I don't even remember having feelings for you. Just kind of woke up into it, if you know what I mean."

Riku gnawed the inside of his cheek, holding back words he knew were completely uncalled for. It had been a day or two since he'd faced Roxas's biting attitude, and he couldn't say that he missed it. "Calm down. I didn't mean anything serious."

"I like you. I do. I don't understand how you _can't_ be serious with a question like that."

"Why do you like me, Roxas? Because Kairi told you to?"

Roxas inhaled sharply, narrowed eyes widening. It only intensified his glare. "You're being an asshole, Riku!"

"Why, then, if you don't even remember meeting me?"

"I just _do_, but it's times like these that make me fucking wonder!"

"Next question."

"Why are you a jackass?"

Riku grinned at Roxas's enraged glower. He knew it would piss him off even more, but he couldn't help it. Just couldn't. "It runs in the family," he replied coolly.

Roxas gritted his teeth. "Very funny. I have another question, though. How long have we known each other?"

"A few weeks. That's the truth."

"And what could have possibly made me even want to talk to you in the first place?"

"Dunno."

"Riku, did Kairi try to set us up together? That could explain why we keep fighting—"

"No, Roxas—I asked you out because I wanted to, alright?!"

Riku stopped. He blinked. He went over his words again, brows slowly furrowing down further and further, until he finally comprehended what had flown out of his mouth in the heat of the argument. It was a complete lie—he wasn't going out with anyone, Sora _or_ Roxas—but for some reason it had just felt right to say. The words just slipped out because he needed to keep the situation from progressing too far beyond salvation; he didn't completely know why, but he was glad he'd said it because it calmed Roxas down enough to stop scowling.

And after a moment Roxas's tight frown relaxed enough for him to say: "...I think I vaguely remember that."

"Really..." Riku grunted offhandedly, nearly deflating into the couch. His muscles were still tense; as much as Roxas ticked him off, he didn't like fighting with him like that. He vowed to avoid that as best as he could with Sora, because that would very well kill him.

Roxas's fingers dusted his. Riku froze, settling a startled stare upon the other boy. It didn't faze Roxas at all; he curled into a sincere grip on Riku's hand, looking back at him dismally. Riku's thoughts tumbled and jumped, as hard to grasp as a handful of water. When did Roxas get _that_ close? Why was his heart pounding like that, and why was Roxas moving closer yet?

Riku pulled his hand free without breaking their gazes. He crossed his arms, rose his brows at the other boy. Roxas frowned faintly in return.

"We've never kissed before, have we?"

"No. We haven't."

"I'm moving too fast for you, hunh?"

"A tad bit."

"I'm sorry."

"You really apologize way too much."

"It's hard for me. Sometimes I just need reminders."

"It's hard for me, too, Roxas. More than you'd know."

Roxas peered at him culpably, his chin just a mere inch of air away from Riku's shoulder. And once again Riku didn't quite know what to feel, because Roxas looked so encumbered and so frustrated that Riku couldn't help but awkwardly lift one arm and hug him, and gracelessly tighten his grip as Roxas snaked his arms around his body and held on firmly in return. Vaguely, he recalled wanting to burn the feel of Sora into his senses, and it made the lopsided embrace feel very wrong. Riku wondered if this was considered cheating, but then had to remind himself that he wasn't in a relationship with Sora. He wasn't even truly in a relationship with Roxas.

'_...Because if you're in love with Sora, you've gotta love Roxas, too.' God, Kairi, get the fuck out of my head._

Riku suddenly felt very...exhausted.

His stomach growled.

"Hey, Roxas, what kind of Hot Pockets do you have?"

Roxas tentatively tilted his head forward, resting his temple against Riku's shoulder. His voice was muffled, directed more to the other boy's bicep than to his ears. "...Steak and cheddar."

"Want to make some for us?"

* * *

The digital clock on the cable box read 12:42, lacking the PM dot in the corner. He was in cotton pajama pants and an old T-shirt, one that was just small enough to twist along the curves of his body but not too tight to be ludicrous on a fourteen-year-old boy. The cordless phone was against his ear, sandwiched between his cheek and shoulder to hold it in place as he tore open the white packaging of another ice cream, socked heels propped on the edge of the coffee table.

"What is that, your third one?"

Roxas grinned sheepishly, and although Kairi couldn't see it she could definitely hear it. "So, what, Kairi?"

"You're going to be mad when you run out."

"Sure, I will. But then I'll be so happy when we buy more."

Kairi's laugh traveled the distance through phone wires, trickling out of the handheld's speaker and into Roxas's ear softly. The television was on and the lights out (save for the kitchen; the kitchen light he always left on), one of the late-night TV14 programs on commercial. Roxas tapped his feet against the edge of the coffee table, finally pulling his ice cream free and holding it reverently by the popsicle stick protruding from its lower end. Tossing the wrapper to the side, he grabbed the phone by his hand again and readjusted himself against the couch cushions, leaning into them comfortably.

He was silent for a moment, listening to Kairi hum on the other line and do whatever it was she did when it was nearly one o'clock AM and she was on the phone with him, and he stayed quiet all through three slow bites of ice cream. On the television, the show had come back on and Peter Griffin was starting up "Surfin' Bird" again, so Roxas decided that it was a good time to tune out of that and back into his conversation.

"Riku and I argued today."

Kairi stopped humming. He could see her face, changing from an inattentive smile to a sudden frown. She sighed, a puff of breath too close to the telephone which made it come out fuzzy on Roxas's end. "Again?" she asked. "Was it bad? I'm sorry I wasn't there... You and Riku are both pretty temperamental, so putting you two alone together is probably dangerous, hunh?" She laughed, diffidently.

Roxas stared at his ice cream as his current mouthful melted on his tongue. His eyes remained there a moment as his mind diverted to a different image, to Riku sitting there frowning at him with something close to condescension but bordering on the edge of anxiety, to Riku saying, _Why do you like me, Roxas? Because Kairi told you to? _

He lifted his ice cream to his lips but before he took another bite, he murmured gently, "Kairi, sometimes I want to handle things on my own, too."

The two-second silence on the other end of the line told him all he needed to know. She'd taken it the wrong way, like he'd sincerely hoped she wouldn't.

"I'm just trying to help you, Roxas," she spat back, offended.

"I know that, but if you keep helping me so much, I won't know how to help myself."

"Am I being too nosy or something?"

"No, not at all."

"Then I'm being too pushy." She huffed. She was getting very cynical. Roxas frowned sharply.

"No, Kairi, you're not. I'm just saying that you never let me solve things myself like I did tonight. I appreciate your help, but really, sometimes I need to do things on my own."

"I just don't want you to get hurt, Roxas."

"Okay, Mom." He laughed. After a moment, she began to giggle meekly as well, and then they were both snickering together and he knew she understood what he was saying.

"Look," Roxas went on, finally getting that bite of ice cream he'd been waiting for, "it wasn't that bad. We just had a few misunderstandings."

"Was he mean to you?"

Roxas seriously considered this as he licked his lips and inspected which bite to take next. Suddenly his mood was crashing, thinking about the things that Riku had said to him—the way he'd looked at him. "Mm," he sighed into the receiver. "I don't really know. I don't know him any other way than kind of standoffish, so..."

"Yeah, he's kinda just like that anyway."

"Mm... I mean, I told him that he was acting really distant. And somehow we got into this discussion about why we're going out and that became this argument, and..." Roxas stopped talking only because his throat felt rather clenched. He swallowed but it didn't help; he tried eating a bite of ice cream and it only served to make him shiver.

"...Roxas? You okay?"

Damn Kairi for knowing him so well. "Yeah." He cleared his throat, trying to sound a bit more believable. "He asked me about my black-outs, you know. He said that you'd told him I have black-outs because of my dad."

Kairi didn't say anything when he paused for her to. His brows furrowed.

"Sometimes I get really confused because I feel like he doesn't like me."

"Oh, Roxas, don't say that—that's not true at _all_!"

"Then why do we fight so much?"

"I don't know. That's just him, I guess."

"I wish I could remember meeting him. I really do..."

"He's trying very hard, Roxas. I can tell you that much."

"I want to try to remember, but I'm afraid I'll black out again." He examined his ice cream, lashes lowered and a tight frown tugging at his mouth. Suddenly just looking at it made him feel a little queasy. "It's like he doesn't even want to get close to me, Kairi. But I just want something to remember in case I... God, I don't know. This is so fucked up. I just woke up one morning and there he was."

"Roxas..." Her voice trailed away as though she wanted to say more, and Roxas really waited for her to continue. He tossed his half-eaten ice cream onto its wrapper, being careful not to get anything on the couch, but by then Kairi was completely silent. Didn't she have anything to say to that? Something soothing like _He likes you, Roxas, he told me himself_, or _Don't worry, things will get easier_, even a _I promise that everything's okay_.

The click of a key being inserted into the front door from outside the house made Roxas jump. "Mom's home," he fumbled out, standing and gathering up his abandoned ice cream and its torn packaging. "Sorry, Kairi. Talk later. Hey, don't worry about me, okay?"

"Okay." She sounded weary. Roxas took a deep breath as he dropped his wasted snack into the trash can, trying to end his thoughts along with the conversation.

"I mean it," he said. "Don't worry."

"Alright. Talk to you later, Roxas."

The front door was opening slowly as he hung up, looking over his shoulder as laughter echoed from the threshold. His mother entered in reverse from the lobby, barefoot as always with her shoes in her hand, and as she tiptoed backward, a man tiptoed forward, grinning at her as he swung the door closed behind him.

Roxas's presence seemed to go unobserved for a second. But as his mom dropped her shoes to the carpet of the living room and the strange man wound a hand around her waist, her eye caught on the boy in the kitchen and her expression fell from a playful smile and lowered lashes to parted lips and widening eyes. She shook her head and began to push her companion away; the guy blinked a few times, not understanding.

"Hey," Roxas greeted, waving limply.

"Hey," Yuuko replied, breathless and ashamed. She squirmed roughly, finally breaking free of the man's embrace—he was tall and muscular, looked a little rough around the edges if not already intoxicated—and trying to smooth down her blouse. "Um, honey, why aren't you in bed?"

"It's Friday night."

"Yes, it is."

"There's a Family Guy marathon on TBS..."

"Oh, really? Why don't you go watch it in your room?"

"Because I don't have a TV in my room, Mom."

She was at a loss for words, gawking at him like a teenager caught in the act would stare at their parents, pleading for some mercy with their punishment. Roxas shifted his weight to the other foot, keeping his gaze on his mother even though he didn't want to. But if he looked elsewhere, he'd probably look at the guy who'd come home with her, and he could already feel that loser looking _him_ up and down—so after a moment of wondering what the hell to do, Roxas simply left the kitchen. He turned off the television as he passed it, striding down the hall and into his bedroom. There he closed and locked the door, and he didn't care if he'd get yelled at for doing that when his mom had told him not to, because he didn't feel safe tonight without the lock flipped.

He kept the light off and crawled into bed, contemplated reading for a while, then wished he had brought the phone so he could call Kairi (or maybe even Riku; he'd found a slip of paper taped to the wall above his pillow the morning he'd come to with a phone number and Riku's name scribbled on it), but eventually, Roxas rolled over and brought the covers up to his ear, nose buried into them and his back turned on his bedroom.

He thought about Riku. He thought about how he hoped Kairi was right, that Riku _was_ trying hard and just not very good at showing his feelings; he thought about how he liked hanging out with him, whether it stayed platonic or went physical; he wondered about how they'd met and how Riku had asked him out. Maybe tomorrow he'd call that number posted above his bed and ask Riku himself.

Roxas nestled deeper into his blankets. His head was beginning to hurt. But he kept thinking because maybe if he concentrated hard enough, he'd remember something good.

* * *

**A/N: This is so late. D: I'm sorry. **

**Don't hold any comments/opinions back—it's been a long weekend and after rereading this, I can't really think straight anymore. e_e**


	8. Swing Life Away

_****_

Candy Boy

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the amazing franchise © Disney and Square Enix; everything else © their rightful owners.**

**Ratings/Warnings: M—profanity, graphic themes, AU **

**A/N: **This chapter contains sexual molestation in the form of** rape. **This is a warning.

* * *

_Chapter Eight_

* * *

The last game of the soccer season was held at Marcy Hollow, an hour bus drive away. It was an unusually dry day for mid-November, the sun freed from its normal blanket of clouds and despite the constant bite of the air, still quite nice out. There were only five minutes left before halftime, the score a close one to two, Traverse City in the lead, when Cloud tilted his head towards Leon and murmured, "Hey... I just thought of something."

The two were loitering Lulu's car; she'd offered to drive all who could fit in the backseat because Wakka was going to be on the bus and that left her with an empty Forenza. Cloud had eagerly obliged (he had no means of transportation otherwise) and he'd managed to talk Leon into it, who then mentioned it to Zidane, who told Zack about the free ride, who invited Aerith but Aerith had plans made with her parents for the weekend. And when the congregation of boys met at the school, the bus rumbling at the curb, Lulu had given them all a bright smile, stepped aside, and pointed to the black Forenza where Yuna sat shotgun with a similar grin. For one hour straight, the girls sat comfortably up front while the four carpoolers suffered from awkward positioning and numb muscles in the back. Just thinking about it, Leon tried to stretch his back. It popped in a few places. "And what's that?" he asked in response to Cloud's statement.

"Remember the schizo kid?"

"Not really. We knew a schizo kid?"

"No, but they've told us about him for a few years now. I mean, I never really paid attention, but you know..."

"Who's 'they'?"

"The school. Middle school."

Leon ran a hand through his hair absently, shrugging. "I guess. What about him?"

"That's who Riku ditched us for."

Leon flicked a skeptical glance to the side, regarding the other boy silently for a moment. Then he crossed his arms, leaning back against the side of Lulu's car, and asked, "How do you know?"

Cloud blinked for a few moments, somewhat chagrined by the question because if he answered it would only attest to the fact that he'd been sneaking observations of the other table during lunch since Riku had deserted them. But hey, Riku had become a regular part of their assembly, so of course he'd be curious as to what could have pulled him away. "I just... It hit me the other day. You know the kid we always thought was kind of weird? Because one day he'd look normal and the next he'd look like someone completely different?"

"Oh, that kid. He's the schizo one they talked about? I couldn't tell, seriously."

"Surprised me, too. But I heard some people talking about him and it all just kind of clicked."

"Tch, why didn't you just ask Tidus?" Leon laughed caustically. "He knows everything about everyone."

Cloud sighed, inattentively weaving his fingers in and out of a limp fist. "Nah. I don't really care, I just thought it was interesting."

"What _I _find interesting is that Riku suddenly prefers a schizo to us."

A whistle pierced the air as the game hit halftime. The field exploded with the noise of supportive families and friends, of enthusiastic soccer players and their coaches. Cloud shrugged in answer and pushed away from the Forenza, holding his hands up to signify that he had no opinion in the matter other than that of a non-biased, impartial, completely objective observer.

"Whatever," Cloud sighed over his shoulder, glancing towards the boy still leaning against the passenger door of the black car. "It really doesn't matter to me. It's just something I thought was pretty out of the ordinary. For Riku, at least." He halted a few feet away, placed his hands on his hips and peered up at the sky in thought. Blond shocks of hair danced in and out of his gaze as he flicked his eyes back to Leon and added quietly, "But I think it's cool that Riku's sticking around him. The schizo kid, I mean. No one else does. That must mean something, right?"

"I think maybe you're looking way too deep into it." Leon absent-mindedly reached up and swept some stray hair out of his face, letting it tuck loosely behind the edge of his ear. "So Riku's new table-mate is the schizo kid. Does it make a difference? No."

Cloud peered at the other boy for a long moment, blue eyes analytical beneath his brows. Then he curled into a sheepish half-smirk and declared, "Hey, it means we don't have to break up any more arguments between him and Yuffie, right?"

Leon chuckled. "Right."

* * *

Saturday morning, an hour or two after the bus had left Traverse City High School grounds with a caravan of cars behind it, Sora locked the front door of his house behind him and slipped the key into his hip pocket. The black lanyard with the silver Mickey heads parading around on it dangled from the edge of the denim opening, trailing down his thigh nearly to his knee. He smiled at the lobby-man and asked him how he was doing (the guy who had the weekend shifts was a lot nicer than the one with weekday shifts), and bobbed his head in a nod as he grinned in reply to the returned question.

_How are you today? _

_Oh, I'm great; you look like you're having a pretty good day already, too._

_Yup, I'm just going for a walk. _

_Oh, nice day out for a walk. _

_Yeah, really nice out._

Sora waved with his free hand (he had grabbed a few Twizzlers and they were clutched in his left fist) as he pushed through the glass doors and out into the crisp November morning. It was more like mid-morning, about ten o'clock AM or a few minutes past, but it was definitely a nice day out for a walk. Most definitely.

He had his black hoodie on, unzipped, but by the time he'd left the townhouse complex and was turning at the corner of Creek and Mable, where Gerald's Flowers greeted the street with bouquets of all different colors, petals, and scents, he'd taken off the jacket and tied it around his waist. And as he strode on, he threaded two Twizzlers into a knot before slipping them into his mouth.

Further ahead along the sidewalk of Creek was a little square of pavement. It was just there, sitting placidly amongst cozy houses and street signs, and while the rest of the road was lined with trees, the neighborhood's concrete anomaly was bleak and quiet. On this relatively small stretch of faded and cracked asphalt, there were two basketball hoops and a quaint patch of grass where a swing-set was, a thick tree looking rather misplaced beside it and not along the sidewalk. It was nothing special enough to be formally dubbed a park and definitely not taken care of (the crushed aluminum cans and abandoned plastic wrappers kicked off to the side of the blacktop spoke well enough of this); there was a streetlamp next to the swing-set and a chain-link fence separating one side of it from someone's yard, sidewalk covering the other three-fourths of its boundaries and making it nothing more than a desolate little playground on a road between Creek Street and the Fallridge Housing Complex.

Sora stepped off the sidewalk and cut across the minuscule basketball court, shuffling along the cement and coming to a stop in front of the swings. His fingers curled gently on the pewter chain, wrist waving to and fro as he let the swing drift flaccidly in his grip and tilted his head to the side in thought. He never saw anyone around this park, in daylight or moonlight, and he figured he liked that because he didn't want any b-ball players taking over the court during the day—and because he knew what kind of people snuck around at night, especially by the railroad tracks out by the old part of town.

He was well acquainted with the extent of the playground's generally safe neglect because he'd been there many times before, and he knew just how peaceful it was at night while in the sunlight it just looked empty.

At the sound of a car passing him by, just his lonesome self in the abandoned playground, Sora dropped his hand away from the chain and watched through his lashes as the vehicle disappeared farther down the street, as if embarrassed to be seen there alone—that was too immature for a fourteen-year-old boy, right?

Tightening his hoodie around his waist, he twisted his last two Twizzlers into a knot and popped it into his mouth, gave the metal support of the swing-set a timid kick with the scuffed toe of his red Converse, and decided he'd walk to the church to see what was going on there.

* * *

"So, um, Riku... After, you know, talking last Thursday, I gotta tell you something."

"Oh?"

"I like someone, too."

"Oh, really." Riku smirked, swerving around a corner with Tidus at his side. When the bell had rung for lunch, the blond had near to tackled Riku as he emerged from Mr. Ryota's classroom, the two tumbling into hallway traffic with Tidus's vociferous (as usual) proclamation that he really needed to talk to Riku and Riku really needed to listen. So, after navigating through the upper halls and their portion of the equally rushed student body, they began trumping down the staircase to the first floor and Tidus replied:

"Yes. Really. And I think I owe you some information, too."

"Is this free or is there a catch?"

"No, all of this—including our conversation on Thursday—is completely confidential. Between you and me and God, bro."

Riku laughed wholeheartedly and almost missed the last step. "Don't talk like that, man. You sound like Wakka."

Tidus snorted, grinning broadly. "Sorry. So—anyway—"

As they entered the cafeteria, Riku hooked a finger in Tidus's shirt, dragging him off to the left. Tidus blinked a few times, wondering why Riku wasn't immediately getting in the lunch line like he always did, but the confusion didn't hinder his words at all.

"—this girl that I like, it's Yuna—"

"Mm-hnm."

"—and she sits with Lulu and I figured maybe I'd ask her to sit with me—"

"Good luck."

"—so I was wondering what you maybe thought about, oh, I don't know, if _I _asked _Yuna, _you could ask _whoever it is YOU like_ to sit with us, too, and—"

Riku halted in the middle of a rather crowded alleyway between tables. Tidus almost ran into him from behind, brows furrowed and a dubious mid-sentence scrawled across his face. The taller boy was staring a short distance away, past the lunch table where Tifa and Cloud had already settled, Yuffie dragging Leon and Aerith along to join them, and as Tidus bounced impatiently on his toes and handed out apologies to the students trying to move past Riku and him, Riku's gaze was glued on the _whoever it was _that he liked.

Because this _whoever it was,_ a few tables away and normally unnoticed amidst the lunchtime sea of adolescents, had a fresh can of Coke cracked open and a few bags of snacks laid out before him, including a bright yellow bag of Swedish Fish candies.

"_Riku_," Tidus hissed, nudging the boy in question roughly. "What are you _doing_?"

"Ah—" Riku wondered if he could possibly be blushing, because he sure as hell felt like his face was on fire. That, or that his heart was going to physically leap out of his chest right there in the cafeteria. He swallowed, trying to form a competent sentence. "Um. Sorry. Nothing. I'm gonna go sit down." Then he remembered Tidus's trusting confession and his not-so innocent proposition and he quickly added, "Just ask Yuna to sit with you. It'll be fine, I'm sure."

And after that, Riku wormed his way through the field of lunch tables to close in on the one where the lone brunet freshman sat.

Tidus remained where he was, mouth hanging open and thoroughly vexed. Then he huffed in defeat and made his way to his regular seat, suddenly not confident enough to approach Yuna just yet. There went plan A. Damn Riku and his damn confusing tendency to ditch.

Sora was just sitting there, looking rather vulnerable all alone at the lunch-table, fishing around in his bag of Fritos for the perfect chip to grab. His brows were furrowed and his mouth skewed into something like a thoughtful frown, eyes focused up on the ceiling; as Riku grew nearer he considered fleetingly how big and blue they were.

He was somewhat fearful to sit down at Sora's table, for a number of reasons. One being the plain, irresistible fact that it was Sora—Sora, for Christ's sake, _Sora_—and the last time he'd seen Sora, he'd tried to kiss him and that had resulted horribly, so what the hell could Riku expect _now_? His mind hurried on to the other reason, this being that the table was irregularly vacant, lacking the general presence of any other students but especially that of a certain girl and her certain friend, who had a certain problem of butting in out of nowhere.

But then Riku's ass hit the bench and he thought, _Oh, I sat down_.

Sora blinked rapidly, thick, dark lashes fluttering in surprise as he looked away from the ceiling and shifted his gaze to peer across the table at Riku. He tried to swallow the corn chip he'd placed in his mouth just a few moments before and almost failed—almost had to take a gulp of Coke to get the damned Frito down, but he managed. He managed to stay reasonably calm even though Riku was staring at him and it made him want to squirm because he couldn't tell whether it was shyness or bitterness in Riku's eyes. Maybe he was just paranoid.

But his heart was suddenly racing and his skin prickled with nervous little shivers, and despite the hormonal alarm blaring throughout his body from central command up top (_Oh my God, Riku. It's Riku. Riku's here. Holy hell, what the fuck, RIKU and he's staring at me_), Sora's emotions reigned supreme. There were more important matters at hand than a simple reaction to the boy who was his friend who he kind of wanted to be more than just his friend.

Sora frowned in hangdog embarrassment, glancing away, and licked his abruptly dry lips before he finally croaked out, "Hey, Riku."

Riku's face broke into an immediate smile, a sudden, bright grin that made Sora's cheeks heat up. He smiled crookedly in return, not quite knowing how else to act in response, and fumbled for a Swedish Fish before picking up the neglected end of his greeting as it seemed Riku obviously wasn't going to.

"Not gonna say 'hey' back, Riku?"

Riku's grin turned almost goofy, in a meek way. Through his lashes, Sora watched it, and it broadened his smile a bit in turn to see Riku so genuinely happy. His eyes were slit into sea-green crescents and Sora still couldn't quite discern the exact look in them, but he knew it was very different from the coldness of Riku Hayate when Sora had met him just a few weeks ago. And he liked that. A lot.

"Hey," Riku said at last.

At his voice, Sora suddenly felt a bit more relieved, straightening up and pushing the Swedish Fish in his fingers through his lips. Briefly noticing that Riku was still wearing his backpack on his shoulders, he watched as the older boy shifted slightly, glancing around with no determined target for his gaze (this boyish, flustered, innocent side to Riku made Sora grin all the more as he chewed his candy) and fading into a gentle half-smile. A thought probed at the back of Sora's mind, culpable and timid: _I probably should have called him on Saturday. Or Sunday even._

And after that transitory, barely-there thought, Sora knew that the moment (whatever kind of moment they were having, he was just positive that it was a _moment_ and that it was extremely important) at hand needed to pause. There were other things that called to be covered first, no matter how much he was thoroughly enjoying the comfort of Riku's clearly enthusiastic presence.

It did make him wonder, though, just what exactly had occurred over the past week. And that thought unsettled him more than a little.

"I guess you met Roxas, then."

Riku seemed to wither a bit at the new subject awkwardly rearing its head in the conversation. His abnormal liveliness waned tensely, the look of glee that had been attached to the corners of his visage disappearing into a critical frown. "Yeah," he murmured after a short length of silence, and Sora smiled drably.

"I should have told you about him."

"Don't sweat it. Kairi filled me in on the necessary." Riku sounded like he really didn't want to talk about it, like he didn't want to ruin their _moment_ with such trivial things.

Sora shrugged. "I just didn't want you to...you know."

And Riku did know. "Never," he assured, and even though it was quite brusque, it was entirely truthful.

"Kairi told me that you two got along great."

"She says a lot of things, you know."

Sora frowned sharply and quieted at that, glancing away as he plucked up another Swedish Fish. A precarious silence shrouded the table, Riku trying to avoid anything that might destroy his emotional haze and Sora deep in thought upon Roxas, Riku, Roxas and Riku, and of loose ends that were still waiting to be tied up.

Eventually, Riku (who had by now moved on to reflect that he was pretty hungry) broke the hush and crossed his arms atop the table, inquiring bluntly, "Why do you eat Swedish Fish all the time?"

Sora's thoughts came to a troubled halt and he frowned at Riku in perplexity. Didn't Riku have any _questions_? Any at all? How could he just shrug all that confusing stuff—Roxas and DID and whatever had happened over the past week—off as insignificant?

But then, peering at him, Sora remembered that Riku could be very good at looking nonchalant when he wasn't.

"I eat them when I'm nervous, I guess," he replied offhandedly, not really caring to find a better explanation at the moment.

"Oh." Riku appeared slightly taken aback. "So, I make you nervous."

"_No_," Sora emphasized, about to take a sip of Coke but only echoing into the half-full aluminum can, his full attention yanked away from his deliberations and back into the conversation with his eyes widening. "No, you...well, yes, but it's a good kind. I mean, like, certain things make me scared-nervous, but you—" He searched for the proper words, face pinching up in frustration: brows knotting, nose wrinkling, mouth twisting. "—you...ah... You..." He froze as he watched a small smirk slowly overtake Riku's face, then blushed hotly and jerked his head down to bury into his arms, flustered. "Oh, whatever!"

Riku laughed softly beneath his breath, reaching out across the table to thread his fingers through a few unruly spikes of hair in solace. It took a moment for him to acknowledge what exactly his hand had begun to do, realizing it only after his digits had tenderly danced through a few locks already. And hastily, more shocked that his limbs now moved without his command (that was a very dangerous thing, especially with Sora back now—very dangerous indeed), he tried to make it seem more like a hair-ruffle than a hair-pet.

But Sora didn't seem to notice. Didn't seem to notice, or didn't seem to mind. Either was quite feasible according to his reaction; he lifted his head, just enough to peek out at Riku with a big blue eye at half-mast, smiling zealously. It was a sly look, one that could just as easily be determined a conversely innocent look, and Riku licked his lips, slowly pulling his hand away. He hoped absently that maybe Sora would say, _'No, that feels good, keep doing it.'_ but he had no such luck. Instead, Sora straightened up, propped his chin in one hand, and offered, "You wanna come over after school, Riku?"

"Uh..." _Speak, Riku. Don't stare, SPEAK. _"Mm, I have to do some things at home first."

Sora's smile became a dark frown and he rolled his eyes, obviously remembering Riku's father and the daily laundry-list Riku had. "Oh. Well, that's fine, then. Just call me before you come over."

"That sounds good to me."

"Riku...?"

Riku paused as he climbed off the bench, raising his brows. "Hnm?" he grunted.

Sora stared at him apologetically, not out of shame but out of guilt. He looked much too encumbered for Riku's liking and he mentally urged him on with whatever it was he was going to say that called for such a troubled expression.

"I know you probably want to get a lot of things cleared up," Sora sighed out, fingering the plastic of an unopened bag of Cheetoh's. "I promise I'll answer every question you have. Just...not now. Later. I _promise_."

Riku shrugged. The very thought of having to go through the process of lining up information into a solid explanation put a huge downer on his mood. What he _wanted_ to do was to go through the process of finding out just how Sora's body would feel against his, preferably within an embrace a little more intimate than a general hug.

But he knew that they needed to talk. Quite frankly, he _wanted_ to talk. But at the moment he was in such a swell mood that it seemed of little importance for the here and now. Like Sora had said, _later_. Talking about Sora's DID was a definite _later_ topic.

"Don't worry about it. We'll get to it," he agreed, shrugging dismissively. But then he felt a small smile trying to cut its way across his face so he let it, kept it tiny but knew it probably looked giddy, and then he breathed out in addition, "I'm just really glad you're back, Sora."

Sora nodded fervently, heaving a grand sigh. "Me, too."

"I'm going to go get some food. Do you want anything?"

Sora thought this over for a moment Riku found far too short for the consideration to be sincere. "A cinnamon roll," Sora chimed then, lighting up in delight at the very idea. "Please," he added as an afterthought, laughing at his own lack of manners.

Riku nodded, giving him a thumbs-up as he headed towards the diminishing lunch-line.

A few tables away, where Tidus and Zidane were racing their way through chocolate milks and Wakka, Yuffie, and Tifa were cheering them on, Cloud's gaze flickered back from the lunch-table a short distance away, over to meet Leon's as his returned from over his shoulder and in a similar direction. Leon was silent, because Cloud only had to look at him—there, just like that—to get his point across.

_Looking too deep into it, hunh? _

* * *

He made it out of the house by five o'clock, having rushed through his chores and slapped together two plates of food (which he left on the counter as he hurried to pull on his jacket and shoes), answering his dad's questions with typically teenage ambiguity. _Where are you going? Out. Out where? Friend's house. Which friend? Sora. When will you be back? Later._

"Eleven o'clock or else!" had followed him out the door but Riku was in too good of a mood to care. In fact, he laughed as he finished buttoning up his jacket, shoved his hands into his pockets, kicked the door shut gently and obliged:

"Okay, see you guys later."

When Sora welcomed him into his living room it was close to five-forty, and he proudly showed Riku the food he'd dug out of the pantry and laid out upon the table, awaiting preparation. "Here're some frozen chicken strips, some instant mashed potatoes, and look what I found! Green beans!" Sora's sarcasm had been anything but spiteful to Riku and he'd hardly been able to stifle his grin, escalating further into his emotional bliss, a hormonal high he'd eagerly labeled "Candy Boy" in honor of its initiator.

So after he'd cooked it all and Sora had made a big deal about the green beans but forced a few into his mouth when Riku had commented on how immature he was being, promptly insisted it was so gross he could barely chew it, refused any more, trashed the rest on his plate, and loaded all the soiled dishes into the dishwasher, Riku finally caught up to reality as he leaned against the table, arms crossed and a casual smirk perking at the corner of his mouth while Sora sat on the countertop idly swinging his feet and still sulking. He glowered at the silver-haired boy from across the kitchen, intensely. Determined to do some kind of bodily harm without any actual physical contact.

"I'm going to die."

"You are not. Don't be a baby."

"Get me my Swedish Fish. I need candy in my system to balance it out before it's too late."

"Oh, you ate like _two_ green beans in total, Sora. Grow up."

Sora gasped at Riku's chuckling, utterly appalled. "I'm poisoned and you're laughing at me! How cruel _are _you?"

"You're an airhead."

"No, I _eat_ Airheads."

Riku snorted, rolling his eyes, and Sora laughed heartily at his own joke, kicking his feet and hugging his middle while the other boy watched, indulging. After a moment, Sora calmed down, sliding off the counter and trotting past Riku to the threshold. There, as Riku observed curiously, he slipped into his shoes and began pulling on his jacket, as if his guest no longer existed or would be simply content with whatever it was Sora had in mind to do.

Riku, though, would be neither of the former. He blinked, cocking a brow. "What are you doing?"

Sora straightened up, looking at Riku with his brows raised and his fingers ascending the front of his jacket, closing it up and fastening the flap that covered the zipper. "Let's go to the park," he proposed, already halfway there.

"_Now_?" Riku grunted. "It's dark out. And it's really cold."

"So what if it's dark?" Sora cast a disappointed glance at the other boy through his lashes, frowning. "I go there all the time at night and it's perfectly safe. Put on your jacket and let's go." He paused, and then his lips inched upwards into an unreadable smile. "I promise that you won't mind the chill."

Riku blinked, again, and wondered if Sora fully realized how provocative he could be at times. He regarded him skeptically as he laced up his red Converse, then sighed in concession and joined the crazy kid on the linoleum threshold, tugging on his own shoes with an incredulous wag of the head.

Five minutes later, Sora locked the door and slipped his house key into his hip pocket out of habit, flashing Riku a modest smile just behind the collar of his jacket. They strode out the main doors pretending as though they didn't feel the stare of the weekday lobby-man, but on the sidewalk, Sora started laughing about the nosy old windbag (his choice of words), and this drew some snickers out of Riku as well, until they'd left the complex and their shared mirth created little white puffs of warmth clinging to the evening air.

Creek Street's concrete playground was only a few minutes away, following the same sidewalk that led out of Fallridge Housing precisely, without crossing a street or turning another direction. The streetlamps had come on, lighting the little road opposite the line of houses and casting a sleepy glow over everything. Windows of the homes across the street shone gauzily with traces of an evening progressing within, and the stretch of pavement Sora had called "the park" was very well illuminated by the artificial light.

"So why do you come at dark?" Riku asked, hands in his pockets as he hurried to keep up with Sora, strutting across the minuscule basketball court. Sora shrugged, disappearing into the shadows of a nearby oak. The sound of chains squeaking graced the relatively silent air of the neighborhood, one comfortably tucked away from the noise of Traverse City's nighttime, and as Riku stepped off the asphalt, his eyes adjusted to the lack of light and he discerned the shape of a tiny swing-set. Sora stood beside it, gripping the chain of one with indifference written all over his face.

"Because there's no one out," he replied blandly.

"Ah," Riku breathed, as if he understood—but he really didn't, because he'd never really been on the streets alone at night, save for the short walk to and fro the Laundromat, or other inconsequential journeys like that.

Sora hopped onto the swing in his hand, situating himself before treading backwards, toes of his Converse tapping the dirt as he pushed off and began to swing weakly.

Riku watched from a small distance, not quite knowing what to think, but then Sora asked, "Aren't you going to swing with me?"

The silver-haired boy thought, _No. The last time I got on a swing, I was in first grade. _But he didn't say it aloud; he only sighed, giving in and trudging over, easing down into the empty swing. The rubber seat sagged beneath his weight and he hooked his arms on the chains, letting his wrists dangle between his knees, remaining stationary.

The chains of Sora's swing creaked and the sound of a car door and keys echoed from somewhere else, carried on the crisp night. From the corner of his eyes, Riku watched him. Watched every movement of his body as he climbed higher and higher into the star-pricked sky, his lashes lowered and his frame in a lithe, smooth rhythm with the swing's motion.

Sora took a slow breath, tilting his head up as he ascended, leaning back as he descended. The rush of the air as he sailed through it spilled through his hair and buffered his body, tickled softly along his skin. It was soothing to him, peaceful. It was a way of leaving the world behind without having to sit in a therapist's office and listen to a tape cassette of the ocean waves with his eyes clenched shut and his head hung.

It wasn't that he had anything to forget; oh, no, there was presently nothing bothering him, nothing haunting him, nothing to think deeply about. Yet. Riku was beside him and that was great, but swinging to him was something like Riku's cooking. He wanted to share it with him and he knew it would only be a matter of time until Riku started to swing a little, too. It was alluring, the simple back-and-forth sway. As comfortable as being rocked, the gentle swish of the air and chatter of chains, the subtle shift of the support as one's weight shot up and then down. It eliminated balance the way it eliminated reality, making his heart jump and his stomach flop.

Sora loved it.

He loved flying out, flying up, watching his toes get closer to the stars each time he soared forward. And each time he flew past the ground, toes barely dusting the tips of the grass, he left one more problem down there on earth, just dropped it and forgot it and immediately felt as light as air. Watched as his red All-Stars exceeded the incandescent halo the street lamp on the sidewalk made against the sky, felt free and weightless and okay. He felt _okay_, like everything that had happened—his dad, his mom, Roxas, the jerks and the embarrassment—was all make-believe and if he kept swinging, he might one night break through the boundary he just _knew_ had to be there, and when he jumped off like he always did, he'd land in a better place, a place where those bad things did not happen but the swings still did. He tried, hoping that maybe one night he'd swing life away for good.

And every time he jumped off, just a few minutes after his feet touched ground again, the trance was gone and he knew it was stupid. Nothing but another level of daydreaming, just like the tape cassette of the ocean waves and how he could blink while listening to them and the next thing he remembered, the hour was gone and it was time to go home.

Riku picked up on a soft humming noise, glancing away from his knuckles and over to Sora. Yup, it was him. He was swinging gently, humming, and Riku could tell he wasn't quite aware of it. Maybe he wasn't even aware that Riku couldn't take his eyes off him now, only capable of examining the way the moonlight kissed his skin and the way his hair was moving in the flux of wind he created, how his legs were slim within his jeans but supple all the same.

And he only wanted to stare at Sora, all night if he could—and despite everything inside of him screaming _NO, don't ruin it!_, Riku kicked at the dirt below his feet and after assuming that Kairi's help in the matter was equal upon both sides, he asked, "Sora, what happened with your dad?"

Sora's feet slammed into the ground and he skidded to a halt, frowning doubtfully. "That's what you want to know? Nothing about Roxas, or...?"

"I want to know about your dad. That'll tell me about Roxas, won't it?"

Sora's frown perked into a smile but it wasn't a relief at all; instead, it was very poignant and very grim, making him look ghastly in the pale light of the moon and the streetlamp and the shadows of the oak tree. "Yeah. You're right." He was silent a moment, then pushed off the ground and began to swing again.

"Riku, what was your childhood like?"

"...Alright, I guess."

"Your dad?"

Riku frowned sharply, wondered what Sora was leading up to with a cold kind of curiosity in his chest. "Different. Not very different, but still different."

"Did he ever hurt you?"

Riku's gaze snapped to the side faster than his head did. He was silent, not out of secrecy but out of sudden fear. It was a possessive, protective fear, angry and dismayed all at once. He had a hunch about what Sora was going to say but he hoped to God it wasn't what he guessed. The very idea of—

Sora took the lack of response as an invite to continue. He moved a bit faster, swung a bit harder, and spoke with an odd, detached maturity that made Riku shiver.

"My dad hurt me. Really, really bad."

* * *

_The house was a mess and smelled too much like air fresheners, again. His mom liked candles more than air fresheners, but his dad was very partial to Febreeze sprays and other such items. He claimed that candles appeared too snooty when guests were over, that air fresheners were more their class. Sora had wondered just what that meant—they weren't rich and they weren't poor, so what in the world could his dad have meant? But what he knew for sure was that it was a very mean thing to say, because his mom had been upset for a long time. _

_He closed the door behind him and kicked off his Sketcher's, holding his backpack by one strap. Discarding it by the coffee table and unwrapping a Starburst, Sora paused when he heard a loud sigh from down the hall, followed by the _fwump_ of something heavy hitting something soft. _

"_Hey..." Sora called, blinking as he pushed the orange square of taffy into his mouth and peered down the hall. "Hey, Dad?" _

_He recieved no answer other than an incoherent mutter, but he recognized the sound of his father's voice. Frowning in uncertainty, he shoved the Starburst wrapper into his back pocket—and frowned further when his fingertips dusted the edge of the folded paper he'd slipped in there after recess. _

"_Dad, I have to show you something," Sora announced as he began trudging down the hall. He really didn't _want_ to show his dad this something, but he knew he'd find out about it later and that he'd prefer to be first in hearing it anyway._

_Swinging through the threshold of his parents' room with one hand grasping the doorframe for poise, he swallowed his candy and promptly began trying to get the taffy residue off his molars and the roof of his mouth. But his actions slowed as he processed exactly what was going on in the bedroom across the hall from his, and his brows furrowed as his face grew troubled. _

_There was a suitcase lying open on the surface of the queen-sized bed, half-filled with clothes already. Drawers had been yanked out of the dresser far enough to jut with precarious unbalance, the clothing within disheveled and the neatness his mom appreciated completely destroyed. And in a pile beside the gaping suitcase was a collection of T-shirts and nice shirts and slacks and jeans and his dad snatched up a handful of them and—_

"_Dad, why are you packing?" _

_Not giving his son a second thought, the man spat, "Go to your room" over his shoulder and shoved the barely-folded clothes into the suitcase with less than careful intent. Sora lingered in the doorway a moment longer, clutching the folded paper he'd pulled from his back pocket tightly, staring at his dad with eyes narrowed in concerned scrutiny and wondering just what was going on. The slip of paper in his fist read _Traverse City Elementary School_ across the top, and below that was his teacher's handwriting, chicken-scratch to him. He already knew what it said, anyway..."Sora Kaimana was late from recess for the fourth time. This is the warning note that is associated with the fourth tardy. The fifth tardy results in a lunch detention and the sixth tardy results in a principal detention. My number is below if you want to contact me. – Mrs. Kieffer, Fifth Grade". _

"_Where are you going, Dad?" Sora tried again, and at his voice, his father's shoulders twitched. He looked at his son, a sharp frown carved into his face; Sora's eyes widened gently. His dad wasn't a tall man but he made up for physical intimidation in bodily expression; his eyes were wild and he didn't look right this afternoon, didn't look right at all, and he turned around fully to give Sora the brunt of his presence. He jabbed a finger into the air and pointed over Sora's head, out into the hall. _

"_I told you to go to your room," he reiterated, the levelness of his voice only proving his gravity. _

"_I just want to know where you're going," Sora said, frowning dubiously as he shuffled out into the hall. "Why are you packing? Are you leaving? Does Mom know you're leaving?" _

_The man suddenly opted to use force to get his son to obey, sweeping into the doorway and reaching out for the fifth-grader standing rigid against the wall across from him. And that was when Sora's instincts told him to bolt._

_He wasn't sure if it was because his dad was looking at him the way he looked at his mom before he told her something that made her very upset for a long time, or if he was just being a big baby, but Sora shoved himself away from the wall and tried to swing to the right and slam his door closed before that reaching hand grabbed him. _

_Yet just as one foot passed through the threshold and landed in his bedroom, strong fingers curled into the cotton of his T-shirt and yanked him back again. Sora grunted, eyes widening—his dad never laid a hand on them, never touched him or his mom in a violent way, only yelled and sometimes scared them but NEVER got violent, so did that mean he was about to? Was Sora going to be the first to experience this new routine?_

_He found himself suddenly half-cradled in his father's arms, leaned into the crook of his elbow. But it was different. It was completely different, and he gawked up at him, confused. It was still his dad, yes, still the youthful-looking guy with the smartly tousled brown hair and the profound blue eyes, the same one who held him on his lap and tucked him in to bed and gave him lots of love-taps on the head or the back or the butt (moms gave kisses, he'd said, but dads didn't), the same one who worked for an advertisement company but was having trouble turning the business into gold, and definitely the one who took out his frustrations on vodka and tobacco and sometimes drugs with his equally disillusioned buddies from work. _

_But there was something oh-so furtherly wrong than the standard wrong here, something wrong-wrong-wrong with this picture and Sora had a feeling it wasn't normal._

_He tried to wriggle away, because his dad's arms were the only thing keeping him from tumbling to the hardwood floor and he'd rather stand on his own—and the next thing he knew, he was against the plaster of the wall and his dad had pushed him hard enough to knock his head against it, and that hurt a little. Scared him a little. He opened his mouth to shout something, glowering up at his father, but he didn't know what to say—Dad, stop? Dad, are you drunk? Dad, what's wrong? _

_But then his dad barked, "You'd better obey me, boy!" and—_

* * *

Riku looked to the side sharply, still trying to digest it all and prepare for more at the same time. Sora had stopped talking suddenly, leaning forward and swinging with enough zeal to make it an Olympic sport.

"Sora..." Riku prompted.

Sora gripped the chains, swinging intently. There, leave that part of the story on the ground. Swing, breathe, get higher, toes past the streetlamp and into the stars now—

"_Sora_."

"I'm okay, Riku. Give me a minute."

He closed his eyes and swung, trying to balance that swing-life-away trance with the reality awaiting him in the swing to his right. Said silver-haired reality slumped, lips pressed in a thin line, watching the boy next to him swoop forward and up, backward and down, and the night felt very cold.

* * *

—_pressed against him, heavy, smashing him into the wall, and something was poking out hard at the front of his dad's pants. Sora had a naive, playground gossip idea of what it was, but he didn't have a name for it. Just knew it was wrong and that was frightening enough; he put up the first struggle then, clenching his teeth and thrashing sharply, but then he was shocked into immobility because his dad had crossed that parental boundary, had crossed that off-limits line that Sora had been taught to never let anyone cross. He sucked in a breath and he wanted to scream but he couldn't move, could only stiffen up against the wall with one of his dad's arms around his waist and the other stretched down with his tan hand between his thighs and he was squeezing, fondling, exploring, TOUCHING him. _

_Sora suddenly felt stupid, more than stupid, even. He should have known this was coming. His dad had never been aggressive before, so the fact that he had pushed him around should have been the big red warning flag for Sora to get out of there, and get out of there quick. _

_But he hadn't._

_This was bad. Sora knew it in his gut, from his instinct and from everything he'd been taught for years._

"_No—"_

"_It's not your fault, Sora. It's your mother's fault."_

_Bad, bad, bad. He should have run away before. He'd missed his chance. WHY was he groping him like that? And why couldn't he get him to stop, no matter how desperately he pulled at his wrist?_

"_Dad—"_

"_But you're just as bad as her sometimes. Jesus, you're just as bad." _

_Sora felt like he wanted to cry but no tears had built up yet. He was only terrified, and maybe that was what he felt—not tears, but terror. His father moved his hand away to clutch at his little thigh, and it was so firm a grip that Sora had a feeling he might have a bruise there after he got away. If he got away. He needed to get away. _

_Couldn't get away._

_His father had him cornered and Sora's eleven-year-old assault wouldn't do as much damage as his dad's. He tried, though; Sora tried hitting him, clenching his knuckles and slamming them into whatever he could find as a target, but as he was distracted with his own determined attack, strong hands were unbuttoning his pants and pulling them down quickly. _

_Sora howled for him to CUT IT OUT but he didn't. _

_When his pants were around his ankles and the air in the house hit him suddenly and arrestingly, Sora had a lucky shot and hooked his dad right in the nose. That was when he really started to cry, whimpering out gentle little sobs not because his dad had just yanked his jeans down so now he stood half-naked in front of him, but because he'd just punched his dad in the face. _

_And he felt like maybe because he'd hit him, he deserved the blow he got in return. He was mad that his dad had the nerve to smack a little kid—especially his own son, but that was definitely not what Sora felt like at the moment—but he didn't fight back. Instead he glared. He glared as hard as he could, eyes narrowed and jaw set firmly even though it was pulsing sharply from where his dad's hand had just impacted it, and either because he was missing his pants or because he was livid, he was beginning to shiver. _

"_This isn't your fault," his dad kept repeating as Sora put up another dedicated struggle, saying it over and over until Sora wondered if he was even sane anymore. He considered kicking him where the sun didn't shine, but he figured that would only get him hit again. Probably harder this time._

_Sora glanced towards his bedroom door. Wondered if maybe he could make it, if he could get out of his dad's grip. _

_His father followed his gaze and husked, "Don't even try it, bud. You run and I'll make her pay. ...Goddamn, you're just like her. You flaunt it, too. Lookit you, standing there with no pants on. Fucking flirt is what you are. Just like her. How did that happen?" _

_Sora's jaw dropped and hung neatly slack. For a moment he really almost snapped, 'Dad, YOU pulled my pants down' but he stayed silent; he shifted, trying to pull his shirt lower with one hand to keep his Down There out of his dad's line of sight. He and all his friends called it a _dick_ but that was beside the point; the point was that it was _his_ and not for his dad to touch like he had earlier. _

_He peeked at his bedroom doorway again, open and taunting him with its possible security. _

_But: _I'll make her pay.

_His dad was going to make his mom pay if he tried to run away, and he didn't want that. He didn't want his mom to pay at all. _

_Sora made a break for it._

_He pushed with all his might, growled low in his throat with the physical exertion of it all and flailed in search of anything for his elbows, his fingernails, his fists, his knees to come in contact with. And suddenly, he found that he was no longer prisoner against the wall so he frantically threw himself at his bedroom threshold, scrambling for the doorknob to get a head-start on slamming the door closed. _

_A hand closed on his upper arm and wrenched him back._

_An uneven yelp escaped his throat as his father tossed him down, not giving him enough time to scramble away after his head thunked the floorboards before simply following him down and keeping him captive beneath his weight. Sora clenched his teeth, struggling, struggling, really terrified now and hoping with everything he had that one of his fists struck hard enough to give him another chance at escape. _

_His dad's longer fingers were venturing up between his legs, behind his private spots, and Sora twitched his hips away the best he could. He saw a flash of his dad's Down There, out his fly and standing upright and over everything else, he thought in an oddly disconnected way, _Where exactly is he going to put that and how is it going to fit?

_But then his dad's hand was over his mouth, and after that Sora's question was answered. _

_A solid heat ripped into him, made him scream into his dad's palm, made the tears start coming again as it stretched and throbbed and pushed further and further. It was sore, and it didn't care if it HURT, it just bloomed deeper and deeper and he didn't quite know how his dad had gotten into him but he knew he most certainly had. He didn't understand why, though. That was the thing. Wasn't this what dads did with moms? Wasn't this what _his _dad and mom did during alone time? Wasn't this between just them and not him? _

_His dad's knee dug into his leg and he couldn't stay still on top of him, kept rolling down harder and harder and each time he did, the heat shoved further in and Sora let out another cry against his rough palm. He hoped his teeth were digging into his dad's skin and hurting just as bad as the thickness inside of him, and vaguely he smelled the sour scent of his dad's breath. Sora fisted his fingers in his father's shirt, knocked his head back against the wooden floor, begged him to Stop, to Just Wait. It—_

* * *

"It hurt," Sora said calmly.

Riku swallowed. It was difficult.

"I think..." Sora sighed, stretching his arms out and leaning back, floating upward towards the sky and then drifting back towards the ground, head cocked to watch the stars and his hair brushing along his temples. He straightened up a bit, glancing at Riku as he began to pick up speed again. "I think he might have been crazy. Riku, why aren't you swinging, too?"

Riku blinked; he sat, weakly, on the unmoving swing. He tried to find his voice but it was successfully hidden, so instead he turned, stomped his way backwards about a foot, and then pushed off to swing with his black Converse outstretched towards the November evening.

* * *

—_poked and it prodded and it was so painfully uncomfortable, and his dad stroked his hair and in between odd guttural noises he whispered, "It's okay, bud. It's not your fault." _

_Sora clawed at the floor and tried to put up another fight, but he wasn't entirely sure how to proceed because it hurt to move his legs too suddenly, and that was when his dad pressed his hand tighter across his mouth and started up with the confusing stuff again. _

_Filthy, he said. Worthless, he said. Pathetic, teasing, unclean, your mother's fault, he said. Because of what she did with that man, he said. She'll never forget, he told him before he broke off into something that started like a low growl but became a hesitant moan, one that sounded incredibly restrained, and as this growl became a moan, the heat spread and filled Sora up completely and he didn't know how but the motion of his dad's thing sliding in and out became much smoother. Something wet tickled the skin of his butt and the first thing he thought was pee, then blood._

_Sora was naive but not wholly ignorant. He knew that this was Sex, that intimate act they'd learned about in health class a while back. But he didn't understand _how_. They were both boys, he was the dad and Sora was the son. The health teacher hadn't told them that a dad could have Sex with a son. Oh, of course, the health teacher had said to get an adult's help when someone touched you and made you feel uncomfortable, but he'd never mentioned that the someone who touched you and made you uncomfortable could be your DAD. _

_This was wrong. Sora knew it. It made him sick. It was filthy and unclean and pathetic and Sora wondered if he really WAS a tease. Wondered if it really WAS his fault, and that this was his deserved punishment. _

_When he jerked out of him for good, it hurt again. Just when the motion of his dad's intruding thrust had become thankfully numb, he yanked out and it hurt. His father wavered as he stood up, breathing heavily, staring down at Sora as he stared back, sprawled on the floor and trembling. The man looked entirely confused as to how the two had gotten into this position, but then he scowled and began to back up. Sora started to clamber in reverse as well, on his elbows. _

_His dad backed up into the bedroom where he'd been packing. Slammed the door. Locked it. _

_Sora's breath came in short little puffs as he slowly sat up, noticing that his pants had somehow slipped off his left ankle and were now hooked only on his right, and even though he was alone in the hallway, he was afraid to move._

_Sex. When you had Sex, the boy put his thing into the girl, between her legs, and that was how babies were made. But when someone had Sex with you and you didn't want to, it was called Rape. _

_Rape. The word raced around in his head uncontrollably, big and bold and red. They'd all giggled when the teacher taught them the Rape song—'No, you don't touch me there. That is my no-no square. R-A-P-E, R-A-P-E, Rape-Rape-Rape'—but never in his life had Sora imagined it was of any importance. And he hadn't even remembered how the stupid little chant went until now, crumpled in the hallway. _

_He didn't understand why._

_Sora used the wall for help getting up, easing upwards to a stand while between his legs, everything throbbed. He looked around, almost disoriented, and then bent over, tugging his pants away from his shin and throwing them at the dead end wall of the hallway. His hands were shaking. He swallowed, glowering at the inert denim jeans and navy-blue Hanes as if they had done something to him, then turned and awkwardly hurried into the bathroom. It hurt very much just to walk in and lock the door behind him. _

_He left his T-shirt on the floor and turned on the shower, and after he'd gotten in, he realized he was bleeding. He didn't know exactly what the other sticky stuff on his thighs was, but by his butt it was all red and he couldn't tell the difference between the two anyway. He waited in the sanctuary of the big bathtub for his mom to come home; the first forty minutes consisted of the shower running but after that, he turned the water off and wrapped himself in a towel, sitting on the floor of the tub staring at his reflection in the bulky silver faucet, lost somewhere else in the silence. _

_The whole thing—RAPE, his mind hissed, determined not to let him forget it—had felt like an eternity had passed but actually had only lasted close to half an hour. It was six o'clock when Sora heard the front door open and his mother's voice travel the house, searching for her son or her husband or both. When she banged on the bathroom door demanding to know who was in it and why the house was a wreck, he asked if his dad was really gone before he flipped the lock open and let her in. _

_She called the police after she stopped crying._

* * *

The only sound in the little park, near the oak tree and the street lamp, was the _crick, crick, crick_ of the chains, two swings penduluming back and forth at different speeds. The nighttime echoed around them with its gentle, buzzing silence, sometimes interjected by echoes of the activities that continued after the streetlamps came on, and after a long moment, Riku just let his swing stop moving.

He licked his lips, staring at his feet. He couldn't find anything to say. He didn't find anything _adequate_ to say. His mind worked to make connections like it had so many other times on the matter of Sora Kaimana, questions longing to be asked but each too stunned to leave his throat, and his reverent hush continued for a few more minutes before Sora finally spoke again.

"You're right. Telling you that says a lot about Roxas."

Riku looked up at him, watched him in the dim light, both natural and manufactured. Sora had a poignant little smile on his face, not swinging so hard anymore but more or less just drifting along.

"A part of me died that night, I guess...and that's where Roxas came from." And then, as his swing flew forward, Sora jumped off and landed awkwardly on the grass just a few inches away from the edge of the blacktop. He stood there a moment, his back turned on the swing-set where Riku was slowly getting up and the swing he'd just leapt off of jerked like a wild horse from its sudden loss of pilot, and then Sora turned halfway, smirking at the other boy.

"You know," he teased, "you really suck at swinging, Riku."

* * *

**A/N: Ach. I'm really late in this but only because every time I went to revise it, I got pulled away by things I had to do. Because of that, I feel like it's very messy or not written well. -sigh.- So, if it is, please bear with me. **

**Chapter title is © Rise Against; I listened to **_**Swing Life Away **_**since I first started writing this and it's played a major role in **_**Candy Boy**_**'s development. 8D**

**The swings and Twizzlers were inspired by and credited to ShinraiFaith. **


	9. Recognition and Domino's Pizza

_****_

Candy Boy

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the amazing franchise © Disney and Square Enix; everything else © their rightful owners.**

**Ratings/Warnings: M—profanity, graphic themes, AU**

* * *

_Chapter Nine_

* * *

"Ouuu, it's really icky out there!"

Kairi stomped her feet on the welcome mat as though they were covered in snow, but what arced away from the soles of her sky-blue tennis shoes and plinked around them was merely water. Sora blinked, holding his hands out to help as the girl exaggeratively chattered her teeth and hissed, "Brrr!" as she unraveled a pink scarf from her neck. Noticing Sora's outstretched palms, she dropped her scarf in them and he obligingly hung it on the back of the nearest chair.

"Did you walk?" he asked, brows risen as she doffed her coat and then untied her shoes, leaving them on the welcome mat so as not to get the linoleum slippery.

"Oh, no," Kairi replied, aghast. "I took the bus here from McDonald's."

"What were you doing at McDonald's? And why didn't you bring me anything?" Sora curled into an indignant frown, crossing his arms and regarding the girl with a condemnatory eye.

Kairi stared at him blankly, stooped over with one shoe on and the other in her hand, her free palm pressed against the door for balance. "Uh..." She blinked. "Well, I figured Riku would have made you dinner. You told me he makes you dinner. Didn't he make you dinner?"

The tables turned. Sora was under scrutiny now and his hypercritical pout quickly became a flustered glare. Well, it was nice to see that he and Riku had already become something close to an _item_ in Kairi's world. "I had a therapy session today, so I told him not to come over."

"Oh, I forgot it was today... Sorry, Sora. And sorry I didn't bring you anything."

"That's alright. Why were you at McDonald's?"

"I stayed after school to help with the play set-up and after that a few of us went to—"

"I didn't know you were in the play."

"I'm not."

Sora cocked a brow in her direction, and he didn't even have to say a word for his question to be heard. _Okay, then, if YOU'RE not in the play, which member of the MALE population is? _Kairi visibly grew red, glancing at him through her lashes and smiling guiltily.

"A few of us grabbed some McDonald's afterwards. That's when you called me."

"For once, I'm glad you have a cell phone."

As if on command, a little oblong in the pocket of Kairi's pants began to vibrate, the _vrrt, vrrt, vrrt_ making the charms on the end clink together frailly.

Kairi laughed sheepishly. "It's probably just Selphie. I'll text her back later."

But Sora knew by the delicate _tink-tink-tink _of her cell phone charms that after he'd turned away and headed for the couch, she'd whipped the phone out of her pocket, thumbed a quick text, and shoved it back into her pocket before following him, padding softly along the carpet in bright yellow socks and plopping down next to him on the white sofa.

Kairi smelled different tonight. She smelled like cinnamon and vanilla, not like flowers and fruit and sunshine. Sora wondered if her perfume changed with the seasons. She just seemed that spirited; even her cheer had somehow gained a kind of holiday buzz to it and Thanksgiving was still a week or so away. Sora tilted to the side as if the force of her sitting down had knocked him over, and when his head hit her shoulder he tipped it up and flashed her a toothy grin. She rolled her eyes, but she still laughed.

"You seem in a good mood."

"I guess I am."

"So your appointment went okay?"

"It was alright." Sora sighed, getting comfortable beside her and closing his eyes, relaxing with a slow sigh as Kairi's fingertips threaded into his hair. They swirled through it and she laughed at him again, tugged a few strands teasingly and muttered, "You're like a cat", then continued to dust her digits along his scalp. It was soothing. She always knew how to make him feel better, like an older sister.

Kairi considered his previous reply and his present attitude for a moment with her lips pursed, then clarified, "'Alright' like everything's fine, or 'alright' like you want to scream?"

"A little of both."

Kairi frowned, tipping her head to the side. Her fingertips danced and twirled. The house was quiet and the ticking of the clock against the far living room wall was suddenly loud and clear. Sora felt as though he were back in a therapist's office, and yet it was definitely more comforting than the tall building downtown.

He took a long breath, looking up at the ceiling through his lashes. "...I told him about waking up on Saturday, and about thinking it was a week ago before realizing it wasn't. He told me about his visit with Roxas and that Roxas refused to do the hypnosis because of Riku... He asked me if _I _knew Riku, and I said Yeah, of course."

"...Uh hunh?"

Sora peered at Kairi through his lashes, wondering what her hesitant _Uh hunh_ had meant, but then he went on, shifting his head to a different angle so she could play with other patches of his hair. She did.

"He asked me how close I was to Riku. I told him that we were close. He kind of looked at me funny after that, like he didn't believe me, and that really pissed me off. And he just kept writing and writing... I hate it when he writes a lot because then I feel like a psycho. Like he's going to commit me or something. He asked me if I had anything else to talk about, if I was having any headaches, how my mom was doing, and I answered as truthfully as I could. I tried to do the hypnosis but for some reason it didn't work, I just couldn't stop thinking about everything else, and Kairi, why are you so quiet?"

Kairi smiled thinly and Sora sat up straight, frowning in concern. "Sorry," she said, dropping her hands to her lap. "Sorry, I— ...I'm just listening, that's all. How come you didn't tell him about Riku?"

Sora's frown sharpened stubbornly at the corners. He shrugged in turn, pulling a leg up to fold beneath the other, creating an evident distance between them to ascertain his feel for the discussion. "What is there to tell him about? Riku is my friend." She was looking at him, levelly and analytically, and it was such a _mothering _look that Sora couldn't stand it. He squirmed. "So what if he tried to kiss me, Kairi? So what if I told you I like him a lot? For the time being, we're just _friends_." He paused, frowning darkly. Then, "Oh, did I tell you I told him about my dad last night?"

Kairi's wry smile faded into a truly surprised look and she blinked, brows climbing up her forehead. "You did? Really? Well, what happened?"

"He was really quiet the rest of the night."

"That doesn't sound like a good sign."

Sora shook his head quickly, heaving a sigh. He didn't want to get back into the sore discussion of that topic; he'd just shaken the discomfiture off himself earlier today. "It doesn't matter. He knows about it now, so that's that."

Kairi was silent for a long time then, just staring at him, and he could tell that a storm was building behind the indigo of her eyes. He waited for a response but he knew one wasn't coming; the longer her hush dragged on, the more uneasy he became, because something big was about to come out of her mouth. Kairi was giving him her patented deliberation look, the one she gave when she was trying to gather enough confidence to go on.

A few more seconds passed and then she had quite enough.

"Did I tell you," she said, modeling her sentence after his, "that I told Roxas he was dating Riku?"

Sora peered at her as if uncomprehending, which he was at first. But then that curdled and became a mortified, stupefied, wide-eyed stare. And after that it shattered into a disbelieving exclamation—

"KAIRI, you told him WHAT?!"

Kairi laughed only because she was very frightened that Sora would be seriously angry with her. But after that her graveness returned and she frowned bitterly, returning the glare she was getting. "I told Roxas he and Riku were dating, that they met during a black-out of his, and that he hadn't told Riku about his black-outs to begin with. I told him they were dating because I had to fix this huge problem where Riku started talking to Roxas before I could explain to Riku what _you_ clearly didn't explain to him yourself, and I warned you, Sora. I told you to tell him, I _warned_ you! And once again you made _me _clean up your mess."

Sora didn't speak. His glare struggled to remain but as the last of her harangue hit his ears, it slowly became a rueful, pinched frown and he regarded her with troubled eyes.

Kairi stared back, sternly.

"I..." His blue eyes flickered away and he drew in a breath to settle himself. "I'm supposed to say 'thank you', right?"

"It would be appreciated."

"Thanks. What would I do without you."

"It would be appreciated _without the sarcasm_."

"He didn't tell me about that." Sora backed up a few paces, thinking over the past forty-odd hours with a knotted brow. "In fact, Riku...didn't tell me _anything_ about Roxas."

"Did you ask?"

"No... I tried to stay away from any _other_ troubling conversation at that point in time."

"Maybe that's your problem here."

"Anything else you think you should tell me, Kairi?"

"Riku was so worried about you," she murmured, jerking the vibes away from squabbling to a contrary something Sora would probably value more. But Sora caught the bitter undertone in her voice, and he didn't understand what her problem was. Whatever it was, though, she was smiling tenderly and she went on to say, "He was freaking out. I tried to help the best I could. I just thought telling Roxas that would make it easier on Riku, because...well, you know, then he doesn't have to start all over with one, and—" She trailed off, glancing down at her knuckles, then away to her socked feet. "Sorry," she said softly.

Sora couldn't stay mad at that. He just couldn't. Because he understood where she was coming from, and even if her tactics were quite unconventional—telling Roxas he was dating Riku without even consulting anyone first, Christ!—they seemed to be working. Although, Sora considered as he gave Kairi a vindicating hug, maybe he needed to talk to Riku about the past week, too.

And possibly, talk to him about the Friday a week and three days ago, too. The Friday he'd made spaghetti.

Kairi didn't hug him back; instead, she patted his shoulder and smiled primly, hopping off the couch to retrieve the remote from the endtable on the opposite side. As she turned on the television and flipped through the channels for something as distraction from the day, she contemplated telling Sora about that afternoon in eighth grade when she'd asked Riku out and he'd denied the offer without a second thought. Contemplated telling Sora how lucky he was to have Riku head over heels for him—because Riku couldn't deny _that_, oh, no, he couldn't, it was brutally obvious he was ga-ga for the guy—but opted that the correct choice would be not to. Sora had enough stress to manage lately, with trying to find out what the world had done after leaving him behind the past week, so it would be infinitely unfair of her if she chose to add that extra cherry of guilt to his lovely life sundae.

"Hey!" Kairi peeped, lighting up suddenly. Sora leaned over, trying to see around her.

"What?"

"Look what's on! I love this movie!"

"Oh, God, are you serious—do we _have_ to watch this?"

"Yes. 'Matilda' is one of my all-time favorites. It doesn't matter how many times you watch it, it's always good."

"But what if something else is on and—"

"Shh! Favorite part!"

* * *

Things were generally back to normal. Or, back to whatever normal had become.

Of course, the Monday night that Sora told Riku about his dad still left Riku with many questions he hadn't asked biding their time in the back of his mind, and he was sure that there were still pieces to the intriguing puzzle of Sora Kaimana, and he was freaking positive that there was an unfinished string of intention hanging patiently from the Friday night he'd almost kissed Sora.

Sora had lost that tainted despondency that Monday night had brought, and on Tuesday he was the intriguingly oddball freshman that Riku'd stumbled into in the first place. Kairi rejoined the table after an absence that had been somewhat alarming, and Selphie was back at her station as sidekick; Riku found that he'd calmed down a lot as well and it was easier to play it cool than it had been a day earlier. And that was how things progressed, slowly dipping back into the tide and the motions they'd been in beforehand.

Things were generally back to normal but there was still so much that remained obscured, and even though it was an almost unbalanced balance, Riku was perfectly content with the slow pace _things_ were going at.

He made connections.

They happened usually unexpectedly, while he was busy with something his mind could easily stray from, unnoticed—sometimes laundry, sometimes dinner, sometimes a particular piece of homework that made him want to go to sleep. But each time it happened, it was a mini eureka, and he'd perk up at the thought, mull over it a moment, then place it neatly with the other tiny puzzle pieces he'd collected over time. And he'd relax, a little more with each new revelation, back into normalcy.

Roxas was Sora's defense mechanism, included in the whole DID package with no extra charge. And that was why Roxas had _almost_ remembered their dad. His dad. Sora's dad? Riku wasn't sure which pronoun to use, but his mind still processed the connection.

Sora had avoided Riku's kiss, had pretty much freaked the fuck out, and Riku could understand why now.

Sora was an intriguing kid, effortlessly sliding between energetic and open to aloof and withdrawn, and Riku figured he could understand that, too. He had a depth that was like poorly lit hallways, chambers that turned and twisted and sloped deeper and deeper with shadows climbing up the walls and sometimes out into reality, with a checkered wristband on his left arm.

No.

No, Riku also made the connection between Roxas and Sora, and he realized that he could not rag on Roxas. That was unfair to everyone. In fact, he didn't really find the motivation; he didn't want to anymore. But maybe that would change when Sora went away again. If he went away again. Riku also wondered time and again if he could keep that from happening.

_I don't want a guy friend, _Sora had said when Riku first sat down and opened his mouth (or, really, Sora had been the first to speak that day, but it didn't make that much of a difference).

And, naturally, Riku knew why Sora hadn't wanted a guy friend. Now.

At one point, while he had been cleaning the living room, Riku had even realized that the story his mom had told him was stuck in his head after years of dormancy, almost extinction. He had no idea why it kept popping up in his mind, interrupting other thoughts rather rudely. ..._You'll learn that you have to look for the good things. They may be hard to find and you might want to give up, but there's always something good... _That was how the boy's reflection went, right?

That was usually when Riku went back to his homework.

* * *

He was running a final hand through his hair, seriously thinking about inviting Sora once again, when the horn began to blare from the car stopping outside his house. The entire cul-de-sac, had it been perhaps of a higher pedigree, would have peeked out the windows at this interruption of an otherwise placid Friday evening for more than the general five seconds that it did, before curtains fell back into place and the vehicular stranger to their street was ignored with a slowly accumulating aggravation that would be expressed in annoyed mutters to the household but never out the door.

Riku, on the other hand, nearly hit the ceiling as he jumped away from the mirror—as if ashamed to be so self-conscious tonight—and dashed out into the hall. There he regained his nonchalance, and the horn kept blaring. His ride outside laid on the horn for a good twenty seconds as he pulled on his jacket and told his mom and dad he'd be back by nine, ten at the latest, and even though a disapproving scowl was writ across his father's face, Riku paid no mind to it and swung the front door shut behind him.

When he emerged from the shoddy white house, the horn abruptly dissipated into nothing but an echo on the dark streets. Running and waiting and sloppily paralleled to the lip of Riku's driveway was a very old, very yellow, very bumper-stickered Mustang and leaning out the open driver's window on his elbow with his breath creating little clouds on the air, Wakka uttered his deep, quixotic laugh and called, "Hey, bro, hurry up! We're already late because _someone_ had to take an hour on her make-up."

Shadows moved in the passenger seat of the car and from the light of the streetlamps lining the cul-de-sac sidewalk (and the headlights of Wakka's car), Riku discerned Lulu slapping her fist into Wakka's shoulder. The junior in the driver's seat threw his head back and filled the neighborhood with his rustic laugh again, and by that time he was climbing out of the car and Riku was tumbling into the back seat and thanking God he was the only one they were picking up because no one else would fit in there with him even if they tried.

Wakka fumbled with the stick-shift almost before he'd closed his door and a moment after he got situated in the front seat, the tires were squeaking as he U-turned dangerously close to Riku's mailbox, popped the clutch once (with Lulu caustically commenting from where she clung to the seat about him not being a race-car driver), and 2nd-geared the car out of the cul-de-sac.

"You ran a stop sign," Riku informed him from the back where he was following Lulu's example and clutching the edge of the seat for dear life. He didn't know which he dreaded more: the cul-de-sac suspecting there'd just been a visitor with potential for a drive-by and then complaining to his dad about it, or the fact that he was quite sure Wakka wasn't following all the guidelines the DMV had in their driver's exam booklets. It was a tight fit back there; his knees were shoved up against the back of Wakka's seat, which was scooted back and reclined primarily for appearance, because the psycho driver was clearly not as tall as his seat professed.

"No one saw it," Wakka mumbled, chuckling beneath his breath as Lulu groaned in disbelief. He propped his steering elbow on the lip of the open window and glanced up into the rear-view mirror, searching out Riku's eyes. They met his with an icy blue-green indifference, and Wakka looked back to the road. "You guys cold? I'll put up my window."

"No," Lulu murmured, calming down gradually, her ebony locks dancing along the fur collar of her heavy black coat.

"No," Riku followed up, crossing his arms and slumping down further to more comfortably poke his knees into the seat imprisoning him in the back. Hidden away in the tiny hold of the yellow Mustang, he watched the lights of the neighborhood flashing by transforming into the artificial luminance of the non-residential areas before becoming neighborhood again as Wakka squealed left onto a street called Pennmyn, his two passengers gripping their belts in fear. Then Riku watched the two up front, silently, as they flickered in and out of the shadows by the light of the streetlamps, the wind rushing into the car and even though now he _was_ getting a little cold he didn't mind, because he was listening to Lulu and Wakka as they argued about why they were late, and he felt a weird kind of envy. Riku didn't know why he was jealous, didn't quite grasp the cold emotion; he was never really jealous of anything, but suddenly he was feeling really misplaced. Lulu had tagged along with Wakka, so wouldn't it have been alright for Sora to tag along with Riku?

God, he was a moron. He seriously should have called and asked.

Their argument wasn't really an argument; it was more or less the playful bickering that ensued between two who didn't realize how horribly right they were for each other. Riku considered spitting that overused line at them, but then Wakka was downshifting jerkily and parking behind a few other cars lined up along the sidewalk, so Riku only thought it at them: _You two act like a married couple, you know that? It's gross. _And then he tried to unfold himself from the pretzel he'd become in the back seat as Wakka turned off the car, tossed the keys to Lulu's cupped palms for safe-keeping, and shot out of the front seat and thumbed the lever for his seat to fly forward and release the hostage in back, all in one swift motion.

"Dude," Wakka clapped Riku on the shoulder as he surfaced from the back seat, using the top of the driver's door for leverage and feeling something like a clown in one of those ridiculous circus acts where they fit like fifty of the performers into one insanely tiny car, "honestly, I didn't think you were gonna come. A few of us didn't, you know?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Riku countered, cocking a brow and smoothing down his jacket, situating his jeans more comfortably on his hips. "Seriously, why wouldn't I, Wakka?"

"Dunno, man," Wakka murmured, and then Lulu was at his side and taking his hand and he was leading the way up the polished stone walk to the front door of the house they'd parked at, so Riku pushed the driver's door shut and jogged to catch up to them, slowly, examining the place as he approached. It was nice, the yard full of trees and bushes and all sorts of flowers bowing over the edges of the curving walkway, which led up a gently sloping front yard to the cement stoop of a tall brick home. The door was shut but the porch light was on, and a warm glow spilled out of the windows from beyond the white curtains pulled in front of them. Riku could almost hear everyone inside, _almost_—he was sure that was Tidus's emphatic voice carried through the walls as Wakka reached out and rang the doorbell, and a few moments later the front door was swung open and Coach Highwind greeted the last three guests with a disappointed glare, his lower jaw jutted out as though a cigarette belonged there but was appropriately vacant.

And from behind him suddenly appeared Tidus's golden-blond mop of a head, and he pushed open the glass door and held his hand out in welcome.

"Well, look at this, you losers finally decided to show up! Too bad the pizza's already gone!"

* * *

It turned out the pizza wasn't really gone; it had only been delivered just five minutes before the yellow Mustang had screeched up to join the party at 497 Pennmyn Drive . The coach's wife had managed to keep all hands off the food until it was confirmed that everyone had arrived, and as Tidus tugged Riku, Wakka, and Lulu into the house and her husband closed the doors, Shera Highwind visibly relaxed, leaving her sentinel post at the front of the table with a fatigued laugh.

"Kids," she muttered with a gentle wag of her head as she disappeared into the kitchen, leaving the soccer team with their coach in the connected family and dining room.

It was after Coach Highwind's speech—husked out coarsely though everyone could see the devotion written on his face clearly, and he even had to stop to clear his throat halfway through; despite his rough attitude, everyone knew that he had a soft spot for his team but no one was ever prepared for him getting emotional—that Riku sat down on the couch with his arms crossed and took a look around. Hands began diving into the pizza while voices extolled their mutual feelings for the coach, and while Shera Highwind looked on from the kitchen threshold with a mousey little smile, the soccer team pizza party officially began.

The entirety of the soccer team, a total of twelve students ranging from freshman to senior, had gathered and besides Lulu accompanying Wakka, Cloud was present as well. After playing on the soccer team for two years straight, he'd become something like a son to Highwind. Everyone knew it and the coach would never admit it. The man stood with his arms crossed between the front door and the dining table, where Domino's pizzas were being distributed onto disposable dinnerware and two liters of soda pop were poured into Dixie cups, and Tidus, one hand propped on his hip and the other gripping a slice of cheese pizza, stood beside the coach going on and on about that one practice that the coach had driven him home and how grateful he was for that ride and the conversation they'd had. It was something along the lines of that, and Riku opted not to eavesdrop. Tidus was an open guy but some things he held close to his heart, and Riku knew that the relationship between the coach and Tidus was very similar to the one between the coach and Cloud.

Riku instead wondered whose idea it had been to hold the party at Coach Highwind's house; couldn't they have just as easily gone to Pizza Hut and reserved a table? The place really was nice, relatively big for a couple with no children. Riku sat on a dark red couch with a cherrywood coffee table a few inches away from his knees, and elegant-looking photographs hung on each milky wall, images spanning decades in black-and-white. Riku speculated about the coach's feelings on this. He seemed like the kind of man who would be uncomfortable with his life displayed on the walls for everyone to see. It was probably his wife's idea, anyway. The thrift store pictures hung up in _his_ living room were his mom's idea, after all.

"Riku, my man—you made it. Who'da thunk?"

Riku rolled grudging aquamarine eyes around to Zack Fair as the senior dropped down to sit on the coffee table across from him, all grins and slicked-back hair. For a moment Riku didn't respond, only stared back with his arms crossed and a tart frown pinching the corners of his mouth, and he wondered as he took in Zack's presence—navy-blue sweater, black boots, Dixie cup in hand—just how many of his team members (and alleged pals) had written him off as a lost cause as soon as he'd begun sitting at a different table during lunch. Seriously, what in hell made everyone think that he was going to avoid his team's season-closing party?

"Yeah," the silver-haired boy replied, nodding slightly. He figured he could just as easily say, _Of course I'm here. Who the fuck started this shit, anyway, treating me like I dropped off the face of the earth?_ But presently Riku didn't even want to say it. Didn't care. It was just a pointless conversation that would be pointless to turn into an argument and pointless to get too worried about. If everyone wanted to be shallow and distance themselves from him because they felt he was becoming increasingly distant from them, so be it. Soccer season was over for a while anyway.

Riku watched as Zack took the subsequent silence as enough of an answer (and, really, Riku hoped that all his thoughts had somehow made it into Zack's understanding without being verbalized; fuck, if he could be a telepath, that would make some things a whole hell of a lot easier) and then he took a sip of his Coke, his eyes darting away from Riku and following Cloud as he passed between the two boys to drop down on the burgundy couch about a foot away from Riku's right elbow, and as the blond joining them offered a little wave and the senior seated on the coffee table returned it with the last two fingers of the hand curled around his drink, Riku suddenly felt kind of misplaced again. No, he felt incredibly misplaced.

Maybe, unconsciously, he _had_ grown distant from everyone.

There had been a time when Riku had thoroughly enjoyed hanging around the two guys sitting beside him; in fact, from the moment he was placed on the soccer team as a ninth-grader to some unknown moment at the end of this past summer, he'd been close with everyone congregated in this house, not just a few of them as it had been reduced to now. He'd been a real social kid—stayed out late and spent hours traversing Traverse City amongst friends from the team and off the team who sometimes made bad choices and sometimes didn't. He'd been their best bud, the freshman with the smooth attitude who could always talk them out of something dumb and into something more exciting, the one with the long hair and the caustic smile, and those times were _definitely_ not as worthless as these times, the times that brought Riku to a red couch with Cloud Strife and Zack Fair beside him and they all knew something was wrong but no one was going to bring it up or try to explain it because it was sad but it was also _pointless_.

Something had been dislocated the day his sophomore year began, and it just kept getting pushed further and further until the day he sat down at a different table. That was when everyone realized he'd distanced himself. Completely extricated himself, really.

Riku swung up and off the couch, smoothed down his jacket (it was very warm in the coach's house, but for some reason he didn't bother to take it off), and muttered, "I'm gonna get some Coke."

"Sure." Zack nodded, peering down at his own soda pop.

"Mm." Cloud leaned against the arm of the couch, propping his cheek in his palm.

Riku asked the coach's wife if he could get some ice for his Coke. She looked surprised that he'd asked in the first place, ushering him into the kitchen and directing him towards the Kenmore with the ice machine built into it. He thanked her over his shoulder, pressed the button, held his Dixie cup out to catch the falling ice, and alone in the kitchen, Riku made another connection. It wasn't really a eureka like the ones he experienced about Sora; it was more of a revelation, calm and detached.

He hadn't really hated everyone until tenth grade began. After summer, they just all annoyed him to no end, and little by little Wakka and Tidus were the only ones who still meant the same to him. Of course, he'd known them longer and they definitely meant more to him anyway, but he treated them the same as everyone else, so that _had _to mean that it wasn't his fault. They were drifting away from him, not vice versa. Right? Wakka and Tidus were still there, but everyone else had...lost their interest, he guessed.

He didn't care about popularity, didn't try to be liked. And now that he was sitting at a different table, now that he wasn't constantly surrounded by them, he was realizing it more clearly—rank was seriously all they cared about, and that was why it had been so great at first but was now dying away.

Riku left his Dixie cup, full of ice, on the clean counter of the Highwind kitchen. He slipped out into the family room, hands in his pockets, and thankfully the coach was talking to his wife and not anyone else. He stepped up beside them, clearing his throat and smiling apologetically for interrupting their conversation.

"I'm heading out," Riku announced.

Coach Highwind's lips fell gently slack and he regarded his silver-haired player skeptically. His wife was silent; she seemed rather reclusive when not on the sidelines cheering vigorously.

"No shit?" the coach asked, raising his brows. His timid little wife gasped, giving him quite the look.

"_Cid_," she hissed, "you're such a bad example!"

"Shera, if you heard some of these kids talk, you'd be all in a fit so just hush up. Now, Riku, no shit?"

"No shit, sir."

Coach Highwind laughed heartily but quickly became serious again. "Why? The party's not over until eight-thirty."

Riku blinked up at the coach without having any idea of what to say to that. He hadn't conjured a good reason, just knew he needed to leave either way, and he could see the man drawing the sentence back to repeat it so he said, "I'm not feeling too good, Highwind. I'll be fine. I don't mean to flake out on you, but..." Riku frowned, touched his stomach to finish off the act. "...flu season. You know."

Vaguely, he thought: _Why the fuck is it always blamed on the flu?_

"And here I am, hosting the damn party in my _house_. I opened up my _house _to you rascals, and—"

"Do you need a ride home, honey?"

"Shera, I said to _hush up_. Please." The coach cast a glance at his wife that clearly read _Men don't want women in their business_, and she bit her mouth into a firm line, peering back at him with an obvious _Men who are jerks reserve the sofa for their bed tonight_. Riku almost had to laugh but he thought maybe that might lose the essence of his sick act.

"No, I don't need a ride. I can walk."

"Well...ah... Take care, alright?" Coach Highwind patted his shoulder, then pulled him into a sloppy, one-armed embrace, the other hand on his hip. "You've been good this season, and I mean crazy-good. I expect you to join up again when the time comes back around, you hear me? You're an essential piece of TCHS soccer and don't you forget it."

"No, sir."

"And quit with that 'sir' crap. You're being a smart-ass and I know it, so just drop it, why don't you."

Riku laughed softly, pulling out of the pseudo hug. "Sorry, sir."

And with a nod of the head and a quirk of his lips in a smile towards the glowering man and his wife, Riku headed for the door.

But he shouldn't have expected to really get out of there without talking to Tidus once.

Tidus shot in front of him as he reached for the doorknob with a mouthful of pizza and his hip slamming into the themed red door. He stared at Riku, aghast, then washed the Domino's down with some Coke and sputtered out, "Where the _hell_ do you think you're going?!"

"Move it, Zanar-can't. I'm leaving."

Tidus uttered a sound of snubbed disbelief that was very much like a choke. "Zanar_kand_, thanks, buddy, and _why are you leaving_?"

"I'm not feeling good."

"Coach may buy that, but I won't."

"I just don't feel like being here."

"Party-pooper."

"I am not. Now move, Tidus, I'm leaving."

Tidus did move. Riku did leave. But Tidus followed him out into the cold and closed the door behind them, and Riku knew he wasn't going to get off the Highwind yard yet. Damn Tidus. He hissed out a breath, watching the cloud it made on the air. He didn't look back at Tidus; he just waited for him to talk.

Which Tidus did, after he set his Dixie cup of Coke down on the stoop, pizza crust beside it. He joined Riku on the stone walkway in a similar position, feet spread and hands in his pockets with his chin tipped up and his eyes on the sky.

"What's wrong?" he asked, without looking away from the pale moon.

"Nothing," Riku murmured. They both knew he was lying.

"Did someone say something to you?"

"Nah."

"Did you say something to—"

"No."

"Can you at least get a ride home from someone?"

"I'll take the bus. I promise. I can catch it at the beginning of this road. I saw the bus stop."

"Yes, but you don't know if it's running from that stop at..." Tidus considered the time. "...seven? Seven-thirty?"

Riku frowned, rolling his eyes. "So?" Walking, although taking longer, would probably be safer than crawling into the back seat of Wakka's treasured yellow Mustang again.

A silence spun out gently, and the next words out of Tidus's mouth weren't playful at all. He had gone completely serious, his voice low and suddenly grave. "You may not believe me, but I know why you're leaving."

"Oh," Riku kicked at the smooth stones cemented into a path beneath their feet, "I believe you."

"Do you, really?"

"Yes. And I know why I'm leaving, too."

"Well, I sure hope so."

"I'm not going to let it get to me. That's just how they are, and as long as you and Wakka don't turn against me, too, I'll—"

"Wait, what?" Tidus twisted into a perplexed frown. In the moonlight he looked incredibly childish, and the porch light made his hair glow. "I thought you were leaving because you miss Sora—"

Riku stared at Tidus with wide eyes, his lips pressed together so firmly they were close to invisible outside in the dark. Tidus gawked back, blinking a few times, mouth still open from the abandoned end of his sentence, and after a moment he started to snicker, then chortle, and then he threw his head back and began to laugh wildly.

Riku continued to stare, unmoving. He licked his lips but they quickly returned to their thin line. He shifted, awkwardly scuffing the rubber toe of his Converse on the ground. His cheeks were burning. And he wondered what the hell was so damn funny.

"Is it that obvious?" he asked finally, and Tidus's laughter stopped out of pure respect.

"Only to me, I think. But that's because I know you."

"Oh." Riku's brow creased and he curled into a puzzled little smile. "That's kind of frightening, though."

"That I know you or that I know you?"

"That you know me."

Tidus beamed at him, propping his hands on his hips now. "Riku, Riku, Riku, what are friends for?"

"This is kind of unfair, if you ask me."

"How so?"

"I don't say a word about you liking Yuna."

"But that's just how you are."

"You're right."

"I told you, I know you."

"No, you're right—I miss Sora." Riku frowned as his shoulders hunched gently; it was starting to really feel cold outside. Yet his face was on fire. "Actually, I was going to invite him, but... You know..."

"I hear you loud and clear."

"I'm leaving now."

"Alright." Tidus paused as he climbed back up the Highwind stoop, picking up his drink and the pizza crust lying beside it. He tilted his head, regarding Riku with a question forming in his mind—Riku could watch it grow on his face, with every movement of his brow and every breath drawn—and as he pulled open the glass door and wrapped his free hand around the main doorknob, Tidus implored, "Riku...?"

Riku sighed through his nose, preparing himself for a toughie like _Don't blame everyone else; they just don't understand _or _Why didn't you just tell me?_, or perhaps even _When do figure you started liking boys?_

But Tidus said, "Are you really going home?"

Riku blinked, brows furrowing. He opened his mouth but his _Hunh?_ never made it out; Tidus continued:

"Because if you're not telling the truth and you're actually going to Sora's house, you have to tell me _everything that happens_—even the gross parts, okay, man?"

Completely blindsided, it was Riku's turn to laugh—guiltily, because having something juicy to confide in Tidus's profound amity was very alluring—and he shook his head, chuckling as he left the Highwind yard. He didn't have to look behind him to know that Tidus took that as a perfectly good answer.

* * *

The bus ran through the Pennmyn stop one more time at seven forty-five. Riku waited ten minutes for it and only had to walk home from the stop outside the Laundromat.

His parents didn't ask why he was back early.

Riku took the phone into his bedroom, and he stared at the number scribbled on a piece of notebook paper for a total of three minutes before he chickened out and returned the telephone receiver to its cradle.

It didn't matter, though, because Sora called him mid Saturday afternoon. Riku hadn't picked up the phone; he was in his room, still wearing the T-shirt and basketball shorts he'd fallen asleep in, socked feet propped up on the edge of his desk with his chair tipped back on its rear legs and the book for his English class spread open on his thumb and forefinger.

His mom rapped lightly on his bedroom door and even though it was open a crack, she waited until he'd called for her to come in before she leaned through the threshold and held the receiver out to him. "So-ra," she half-whispered, half-mouthed, and the deeply remorseful frown on her face professed clearly that she was still feeling guilty for mistaking him as a girl. Riku blinked, dropping his feet down to the floor and turning towards the outstretched telephone, keeping his place in _Les Miserables _with his first finger.

He took the phone with a deadpan flippancy and as his mother closed the bedroom door, she never would have suspected that beneath his normally nonchalant composure, her son was having trouble not collapsing in a fit of apprehension.

The door clicked shut and Riku exhaled slowly, staring at his messy bed and half-shut blinds with restless eyes. "Hello?" he hailed, brows raised and the hand clutching his paperback classic already clammy. Fuckshitdamn, why was he so _nervous_?

"Hey," Sora's voice sounded from the other line, and some of the tension in Riku's shoulders eased. He slumped a bit, shifting the phone and pressing it harder to his ear. What was that? Did he hear a bit of nervousness in Sora's voice, too?

"What's up?" He felt rather confident that he was coming across as casual as he wanted to, even though his heart was running a race with the seconds as they ticked by.

"Do you want to come over?"

"You want me to cook, right?" Riku laughed, and it sounded a little forced so he quickly brought it to a halt.

On the other end, street signs away in the Fallridge Housing Complex, Sora chuckled a bit in turn. The sound of his laugh, soft and shy coming across the phone lines, made Riku calm down remarkably. "Maybe," Sora said. There was a slight pause. Then he added, "Maybe not." And there was a tiny little upturn to the end of that sentence, that suggestive little phrase, making it all the more intriguing. Riku's stomach pinched but other than that he managed to keep himself relatively _more_ under control than he had been when his mom had told him who was calling.

Tilting his head back and looking up at the ceiling, Riku tapped the back of _Les Miserables_ on his thigh. "Um...well, I can grab something on the way over if you want."

"Doesn't that defeat the purpose?"

"Not today." Riku grinned, but knew Sora wouldn't see it. Maybe he'd hear it. "Today is my day off. Don't fuck it up for me."

Sora laughed again, sharper. He got the joke. Played along. "Alright, then. If today is your day off, waste it in a better way than holed up in your house doing homework. Come over and we can have a party. Until my mom gets off work at seven, of course." He paused again, and in the hush, Riku could definitely hear Sora's grin, buzzing on the lack of words. Riku snorted. Then Sora offered, "We'll order pizza or something?"

"No pizza. I'll grab something on the way over."

"I have movies to watch. You can choose."

"Because it's my day off?"

"Um...yeah." Sora's laugh traveled across the phone and tickled Riku's ear again. Riku's smirk died down into a gentle smile and he threw his book onto the bed, standing up slowly. The renowned tale of the French Revolution and the common love in everyone's heart could definitely wait until tomorrow.

"Okay," he said, making his way to the closet for some fresh clothes. "How about burgers—"

"Burgers? Riku Hayate eating _burgers_? Isn't that unhealthy?"

"Shut up. I'll get subs, then."

"Burger King sounds _way _better than Subway."

"Let me get dressed, I'll hit Burger King, and when I get there I'll pick a movie for us to watch while we eat. Sound like a plan?"

"It's a date," Sora approved, and the words ringing out into Riku's ear from the handheld receiver propped between his shoulder and cheek as he buttoned up a pair of jeans made his finally-calm body give another shudder of excitement.

"Whatever," he laughed in return, only because he wasn't too sure if Sora was jokingly serious or not. He guessed not, but with Sora you never knew. You just never knew.

"How long until you get here?"

"Give me an hour at the most."

"An _hour_?"

"Public transit, Sora. You have to be patient."

Sora heaved a frustrated breath and it drifted out of Riku's line something like perfection. "Fine," he followed up, but he didn't sound at all as disappointed as his sigh had been. "See you later, Riku."

_God, LOVE it when you say my name like that. _"See you in a few."

And after he hung up, Riku's stomach gave one last flop before he successfully got himself under control.

* * *

**A/N: The ending scene of this chapter is going to continue into the beginning of the next chapter. I'm posting two chapters at one time this week for a couple of reasons. **

**One, because I'm going out of state this Monday for a week and the state of the internet/computer there is presently unknown. Dx **

**Two, because this became a lot longer than I expected it to.**

**And three, because it took so long to write. **

**So, anyway, enjoy the double update! =D**


	10. Faint

_**Candy Boy**_

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the amazing franchise © Disney and Square Enix; everything else © their rightful owners. **

**Ratings/Warnings: M—profanity, graphic themes, AU**

* * *

_Chapter Ten_

* * *

Outside it was biting cold and wet, dark gray clouds rolling overhead with threats of another storm waiting to be unbottled, but inside it was warm and quiet, and the smell of Burger King filled the living room where there had previously been the scent of a candle labeled "Vanilla Sugar".

And the whole time they ate, Sora had a wickedly satisfied smile on his face.

Riku had taken a little over forty minutes, catching the bus near the Laundromat and taking it to the Four Corners stop (this was amongst four different fast-food restaurants that all shared a single four-way intersection, thus gaining the street epithet "Four Corners"), boarding another bus at the same stop and getting off three blocks from the Fallridge Housing Complex. He'd trotted in through the door as Sora held it open with two drinks and a pair of grease-stained brown bags proclaiming _Have it your way!_ in his hands, and that was when Sora's grinning had begun. His delighted leer grew bigger and bigger as he helped Riku unload the food out on the table and let his eyes take in their supper spread—two medium Cokes, one Whopper, one small box of chicken tenders, a large of onion rings and a large of fries.

Riku presented the varying choices to Sora with a reluctant frown.

"Who gets what?" Sora had asked, eagerly.

"We share. That's why I got different things."

"I think we should split it all between us. All of it. Like a feast."

"Good idea."

So they'd laid it out in the middle of the table, the Whopper cut in half and the rest of the food left accessibly in their boxes. Sora brought out the ketchup and the mustard (and made it clear by the disgusted pinch of his mouth that he highly disapproved of Riku's preference for the yellow condiment), and their pseudo feast commenced.

Their dinner conversation was awkward, but only because neither knew exactly what to say. There were certain limits on what to talk about at the lunch table, but secluded as they were from the rest of the world at the moment, thoughts reigned freely yet struggled to be put into action. Riku noted that Sora was remarkably cheerier, and Sora duly noted that Riku was back to his old self as well—sarcastic and cynical. Sora refreshed Riku on the fact that his mother wasn't going to be back until seven, even eight perhaps, and Riku said that was fine. Then he told Sora he probably wasn't going to get his ears pierced, and it took Sora a moment to fully recognize the evocative joke but when he did, he frowned in embarrassment, then chuckled as he threw a french fry across the table. Riku glared, picked it up, and dipped it into the mustard and ate it, making Sora laugh harder, and as Riku chewed, he smiled lightly.

"You can choose from these," Sora said then, talking around the striped straw poked in the corner of his mouth and sliding a few video tapes over to Riku. Riku's eyes flicked between the options as he ate a piece of chicken, wondering why he hadn't seen the tapes there before. There were four: _Murder by Numbers, A Walk to Remember, Pay it Forward, _and _Wakko's Wish_. Riku raised a brow as he took a sip of Coke, observing the jump from murder-thriller to romance to inspirational to the Animaniacs. He set his drink back down and reached over, tapping the VHS with Yakko, Wakko, and Dot on the video sleeve. Sora's eyes followed his movement closely.

"Helloooo, _nurse_," Riku said below his breath, and Sora blinked emptily a couple of times before promptly bursting into laughter.

"I can't—believe—you just _said _that!"

"I did." Riku nodded curtly. Then he grinned, unable to avoid Sora's mirth. It was damn well contagious, and it stirred up a storm inside him the way Sora's eyes were slit into pure blue crescent moons—and was that a slightly pink tint to Sora's cheeks?

Sora sighed, still beaming as his laughter departed with the heavy exhalation; he slumped against the table, thoughtfully tapping his chin with a french fry headed for his mouth. "Does that mean you want to watch 'Wakko's Wish'?"

"No."

Sora popped the fry into his mouth and frowned dismissively; Riku propped his elbows atop the table, threading his fingers together with his knuckles brushing his upper lip. He'd eaten his fill by now, a total of numerous fries, a few onion rings, and the majority of the chicken tenders. Sora was beginning on the remaining french fries, his half of the Whopper gone and a few bites of the second half missing. He ate methodically, in an intriguingly precise fashion, Riku noticed; he took bites equal to gulps of his drink, and he took them in a pattern. First the burger, then a fry, then an unintentionally measured sip of Coke, and then everything again in the same order.

Riku smiled vaguely around his straw as he drained the last of the Coke that had settled into the ice at the base of the paper cup. Sora reached out as he chewed another fry, pushing _Wakko's Wish_ to the side. "Okay, then...pick. Don't make me do eeny-meeny-miney-mo."

"I don't know what to pick."

"Pick one, Riku."

Riku took it upon himself to do the eeny-meeny-miney-mo, anyway; he did it silently, with his eyes. And his-mother-picked-the-very-best-one, his gaze landing upon the movie in the middle.

"'A Walk to Remember'..." He muttered, letting the last syllable hum with the uncertainty of a question.

Sora's playfulness softened a bit at Riku's choice—or _considered_ choice, really—and he fumbled with his straw, leaning back in the chair. "Don't laugh at me," he instructed, a sheepish look writing itself across his face. When Riku cut his eyes up to meet Sora's, he was smiling in a distant fashion, one that made Riku a little saddened.

"Why would I laugh at you?" he asked in a murmur.

"'A Walk to Remember' is one of my favorite movies. Ever."

"Alright. So what, you're a guy with a heart."

"Yes, I am."

"I've never seen it."

"You've..._never_ seen it?!"

"Apparently I'm not a guy with a heart."

Sora clucked his tongue in disagreement, but otherwise didn't say a word; he pointedly cast his gaze off across the living room, tipping his chair back a few inches. "You're just stubborn," he said after a moment, and flashed Riku an indecipherable smile. It locked the silver-haired boy in place, not sure what to think or what to do or what to even say in response, but Sora didn't seem to want any reply. He plucked his straw one last time, then stood up and began to gather their trash into the Burger King bags.

Riku pushed _Murder by Numbers_ and _Pay it Forward_ to the side resolutely. "Let's watch it," he decided.

"You'll like it, I think."

"Is it unbearably sappy?"

"No."

"Do you cry and eat ice cream while you watch it?"

"Nope."

"Will I get bored?"

"I told you, I think you'll like it."

"Okay, then. Pop it in, candy boy."

Sora stopped as the flippant moniker graced his ears, making his stomach twist. His lips wanted to smile but he playfully plastered on a sharp frown, more like a pout, as he looked down to the reason the pet name had popped out in the first place: the bag of Swedish Fish he'd just pulled from his backpack. He sent Riku a petulant glance, grabbing the movie from his hands and making his way to the VCR.

"I like my candy," he said plainly, and Riku's small smile became a cat-eyed grin, then waned contentedly. He dropped down to the white sofa, an arm slung over the back, and watched through his lashes as Sora crouched between the television and the coffee table to rewind to the beginning and then fast-forward through the previews. Briefly, Riku remembered watching the brunet in the Laundromat as he switched his load of clothes from the washer to the dryer, and once again he thought about how slim Sora was beneath his shirt.

And, once again, he also thought about how he'd like to feel Sora's lean frame twisted up against his.

And, all of a sudden, he realized that Sora was watching him over his shoulder, curious but not yet oblivious.

"Riku..."

_Oh, Go_— _Maybe if I'm quiet, he'll say my name again._

But Sora didn't. He just stared, waiting for the answer his solicitation would obtain.

"What?"

"Remember Monday night? You never told me what _your_ childhood was like."

Riku thought at first, _Um, yeah, I remember Monday night but I thought we'd gotten past that?_ and then he considered that those thoughts were quite unfair, so he shrugged, crossing his arms and propping his heels against the edge of the coffee table. "It wasn't too bad. It wasn't perfect, I'll admit it, but there's nothing..." He trailed off with his tongue at the roof of his mouth, prepared to execute the rest of the sentence—_but there's nothing...like what happened to you._ Feeling guilty even though he hadn't even said it aloud, Riku swallowed and hoped it wasn't obvious he had changed the ending of his response. "...nothing that's worth mentioning."

"You said your dad was a little different. Was he?"

Riku shrugged again. Damn, Sora remembered every detail. Then again, so did he. "Well...he wasn't always a deadbeat."

"Uh-hunh..." He had fast-forwarded too far; he was rewinding again.

"He was actually pretty dedicated at one point. Not about being a dad, but about getting the bills paid." This, Sora observed, Riku said with a notable amount of bitterness. "For some reason, though, everything just went downhill—before I started kindergarten, so I don't remember exactly. He just got more and more disconnected from us as time went on."

The VCR clicked as Sora hit the Stop button. "Do you ever...wish he was different?"

Riku could see their reflections in the television screen, he sprawled on the couch and Sora hunched in a ball between the coffee table and the TV. He didn't speak, just stared at their reflections, because the feel of the air told him Sora wasn't done with his inquiry yet; in the vibrant blue of the television set, he saw Sora's tight frown and knotted brows, and Riku was about to reach forward and touch his shoulder to bring him back into reality when Sora wrapped it up. He spoke low, barely above a whisper, and yet his words weren't soft at all. No, the other half of the question was collected and sullen, with a note of pensiveness at the end.

"Don't you ever wish...you know, that things had been normal?"

Riku couldn't bear to watch Sora's reflection in the television screen anymore; he looked now to the back of Sora's head, into the layered and cowlicked brown hair and down to his thin shoulders, then to the hand still resting atop the VCR. He seriously considered the dour query, because he wanted to give Sora an honest answer and nothing else. Because sometimes when there's nothing else to say, the truth is the best option.

"Well... I think if things had been any different—for me _or_ you—we may have never met each other."

At that, Sora immediately looked over his shoulder, and the raw emotion in his eyes once again made Riku's chest tighten. It was different this time, a sentiment that Riku couldn't find the name for and as he was struggling for the proper one, Sora's lips perked into a weak smile and he nodded, mumbling, "See, you _do_ have a heart." Then he blinked a few times, and as his dark lashes fluttered, the poignancy of his stare disappeared. Riku felt the mood in the room begin to lift with a silent tangibility, and he wondered if Sora sensed it, too.

"And as a guy with a heart," Sora punched Play, stood up, skirted the end of the coffee table, and then plopped down beside Riku on the sofa, "you will enjoy this movie." He pointed to the TV as the last of the VCR static ran across the screen and the film began to smooth out.

Riku basked, again, in how quickly Sora could put on a new smile.

"Have you talked to Kairi lately?"

"Riku, the movie is on."

Riku didn't care; he waited for the answer that he knew he was going to get whether the movie was on or not. Sora was silent, watching as names faded in and out of the black and the song in the background started up, and then he turned to Riku and said, "Yeah. I've talked to her. Why?"

"Did she tell you everything?"

"'Everything' covers a lot of different things."

"About Roxas and...you know, me."

"Yup." Sora looked back to the movie, mimicking Riku's position with his feet propped up and his arms folded. Riku flicked his eyes away from his hands (where he was examining a scrape he'd gotten on his knuckle; it was one of those funny nicks that occur out of the blue and are so tiny they aren't even noticed until later) and over to Sora's face, searching for perhaps an explanation for the terseness in his voice. Although, Riku was confident he could easily find the reason by simple skills of deduction.

"So there's nothing you want to talk about?"

Sora had his bag of Swedish Fish on the couch beside him; at Riku's inquisition, he pulled two red candies out and popped them into his mouth. "Nope," he replied. "Not really. Look, this part is important."

Riku dropped it, frowning; he looked to the television, watching with at first an empty kind of interest, but soon getting caught up in the movie enough to seriously forget talking about anything that might tip the precarious afternoon from good to bad. Fifteen minutes passed and he was just as engrossed as Sora was, though he had a feeling Sora knew exactly what was going to happen but nevertheless experienced the same anticipation as he had the first time—and that was when a few gears in Riku's head began to turn, cautiously at first, until each new scene of the movie provoked a hastier speed and his thoughts were racing and he had to keep ordering himself to relax and just watch the damn movie before he got a headache.

It worked, for a little bit.

* * *

It was the scene when Landon sucker-punched his old pal for insulting Jamie (this solicited a soft, He-Deserved-It grunt from Sora, as though he hadn't seen it coming at all) that Riku really gathered enough courage to say something.

Sora had turned out the lights when they both really started giving the movie their full attention, claiming bluntly, "It's always better in the dark." He rejoined Riku on the sofa and a silence spun out in the dimly-lit living room, Sora seemingly rapt—though that could easily have been a wrong assumption, seeing as how Riku was having a hard time wrestling with his concentration but probably looked just as fascinated. He wondered now and again if Sora was feeling as edgy as he was, sitting on the couch with the lights out, alone in the house for nearly two and a half more hours, watching a movie—romantic of all kinds, for Christ's sake.

Had Sora been leaning so close to him this whole time?

He snuck a glimpse in Sora's direction through his lashes, realizing transiently in the back of his mind that it was Sora on the sofa with him this time and not Roxas. And beside him on the sofa, Sora's eyes were glued to the TV and his mouth was open and his fingers were holding a Swedish Fish against his lower lip, as if he'd been in the process of eating one but had gotten sidetracked and forgotten all about it.

Yes, it was when Landon punched the guy in the cafeteria for talking bad about Jamie and when Sora shifted just a smidge closer, intentionally or unintentionally, curled up on the couch with his lips parted and looking devilishly soft, that Riku felt something powerful zip through his nervous system and he turned to face Sora, the words buzzing electrically on the tip of his tongue.

It wasn't something he could control; it never had been. Riku knew that now. It had begun as simple intrigue, and yet spiraled into—

"Sora."

Big blue eyes lingered on the movie for one second before drifting over to meet Riku's. Sora licked his lips and gently pressed them together, raising his brows. He rolled the little red candy on the pads of his thumb and forefinger, breathing out, "Hnm?" as though he had no idea what discomfort Riku was going through because of him, because of how he looked just sitting there and peeking at him like that.

Riku swallowed, hoping the words hadn't escaped him. But then he thought of spaghetti-dinner Friday a little over two weeks ago, how that goal had never been reached, how that night's ending was a little black hole in his mind's chain of events because there had been no conclusion as of yet. And that made him forge strongly ahead.

"Hypothetical situation."

"Hunh?"

"Humor me, okay? Hypothetical situation—there's this person who really wants to be with this other person, but he's afraid this other person will try to avoid any kind of physical relationship at all costs. What would you do in his position?"

"I would give it a go."

It was plain that Sora was taking it as hypothetically as hypothetic could go, no covert misconceptions here. Riku's lips pressed into a thin line and he shook his head. Somehow, he found Sora's answer hard to believe.

"No, really think about it... What would you do?"

"Seriously...I'd give it a go," Sora reiterated, but Riku saw the words begin to sink in further than friendly advice. It was written all over Sora's face, from his soft frown to his reflective eyes, and the Swedish Fish still poked up near his chin. His gaze traveled Riku up and down; he was staring at him expectantly, patiently, keenly. But Sora didn't understand what kind of answer he wanted for a question like that—

It dawned on him then and Sora quickly glanced away, feeling that if he continued looking at Riku he might get dizzy.

"Riku, I..."

Riku slumped slightly, not sure how to take the other boy's reaction; it was something like a big fat NO and yet if he looked at it a different way, there was definitely more beyond Sora's coy evasion. "Never mind. Forget it," he said, knowing that if there really was another course in this situation, Sora would take the dismissal as reassurance and carry on. And it worked.

Sora picked up the loose end of his sentence, swallowing gently. "...I didn't know you had... Well, I mean, I did, but...me?" Sora frowned, elbows propped on his knees and that uncomplaining Swedish Fish now dangling between his shins instead of dusting his lower lip. He didn't look at Riku as he sought confirmation next; he only settled his gaze on his hands as he fumbled with the candy.

"You wanna date me, Riku?"

Riku's flustered state escalated into full-blown delight at the very idea being spoken aloud, his muscles tingling and his toes tapping against the edge of the coffee table anxiously, but his mouth sharpened into a brusque little frown and he mumbled, "No, not 'date'. Dating is too short-term, too shallow."

"Then what do you want?" Sora sounded like he was losing his patience. Riku didn't like that.

"I want to be with you."

"Isn't that what dating is?"

"_No_. I told you already. Dating is...what idiots do during high-school and it never lasts. I don't want to just hop around the bases for a week, break up and get back together all in one day just for the sake of it, and I am _definitely_ not looking to start any drama because I wanna be with a boy. Alright? It's this simple, Sora: I want to _be with you_."

The hush that followed stretched out for what felt like eternities, Riku trying to breathe after rushing out so many confessions at once, Sora trying to breathe after sucking in so many silent gasps. He stared at the Swedish Fish in his fingers, thought that the TV was really loud when both of them were quiet and not watching...and there were fingers touching his shoulder now, tentative and warm. He flicked a dark blue glance over to watch as they crawled up his arm, towards his neck where their tips dusted his skin and caused a torrent of shivers to assail his back, and Sora's eyes trailed up the fingers, up the arm, up to Riku's shy little smirk. It wasn't mean at all; it was just an embarrassed quirk of the lips and in spite of it, his eyes said everything much more clearly.

When he drew in a breath to finally respond, Riku stopped craning towards him (he hadn't really realized he'd been doing it in the first place), halting right where he was a few inches from Sora's cheek and leaning over the minimal inches that had separated them beforehand. Sora turned his head slightly, peering at Riku through the corner of his eye, and his mouth hung open as he became abruptly tongue-tied—but then everything slammed into play and he said, "It's not that I don't want to be with you. I want to. I do."

"Is that a yes or a no?"

"I don't know."

"I think you do."

"I'm scared."

Riku was silent; he hadn't moved any closer because he was waiting for Sora's admission to come, waiting after weeks of evaluating and if what Sora said was what Riku guessed he was going to say, Riku was going to feel pretty damn confident about his feelings.

"I'm scared," Sora repeated, closer to a whisper. "I guess it's pretty noticeable, hunh? That I don't want to associate with new people because I'm afraid."

"But, what about Kai—"

"Riku, Kairi's been like family—more than family, even—for years. Practically since I started school."

Riku didn't have anything to say to that; he simply waited. Sora swallowed, and continued.

"I was kind of curious when you wouldn't leave me alone," he mumbled, and Riku felt warm guilt blooming throughout his chest in agreement, spreading up to his face where it made his cheeks prickle with heat. "I kept thinking, 'Is he just another creep trying to make fun of me?' but for some reason I knew that you weren't. I just had this gut feeling...that, you know, that you were better than all that."

"You're not telling me what you're afraid of."

"Isn't it obvious?" The volume and intensity of Sora's voice shifted sharply and he tensed up, regarding Riku curtly. There was fear in those eyes, anger and fear and near his pupils, a glint of hope. Such simple emotions that could weave such complex webs in the dark blue of his stare. "Isn't it obvious that because of my _dad_, I'm afraid of everyone? Oh, it's gotten better over the last four years, but I'm still scared, Riku. I'm scared of getting close to someone, I'm scared of trusting someone, I'm scared that if I do that, they'll end up hurting me or I'll end up hurting them. It's the normal scenario, the normal reaction. It's the _expected_ reaction in a case like mine, Riku. It's in every psych book ever—hell, even _Selphie_ could have told you this!"

Sora's eyes had narrowed. He finished close to the point of yelling, but regardless of his jagged words and harsh tone, Riku remained where he was with conviction, a few inches away with one elbow on the back of the couch and a leg tucked up beneath the other.

"I just wanted to hear it from you," Riku eventually murmured, and at that Sora realized he'd understood it all even before a single word had been spoken. Sora very well deflated—out of relief or out of loss of composure; he wasn't sure what he felt—into the sofa cushions as he let out a long breath.

"I'm sorry," Sora mumbled after a relatively lengthy silence, staring at his fingertips. "That's the truth, though, Riku."

"I know."

"I'm not scared of you. That's not what I meant—"

"I know what you meant."

"I'm sorry."

"You and Roxas apologize way too much. I've noticed that."

Sora visibly tensed at the mention of Roxas, and Riku wondered if it was because he spoke of him like a separate individual so freely. Really, he didn't understand why he _shouldn't_, but maybe Sora had gone rigid because he wasn't _used_ to people talking about Roxas and him like that. Sora shook it off though, turning an apologetic smile over to Riku as he clarified, "I'm sorry for freaking you out on Friday."

"...Oh, you mean _that_ Friday?"

"What other Friday is there?" Sora chuckled feebly, propping an arm up on the back cushion of the couch alongside Riku's, letting their forearms brush. It wasn't amatory at all, only warm.

Riku was quiet, brow creased faintly. His gaze flickered up and down the boy in front of him, covering every inch from his socked feet to his red long-sleeved shirt, to his mussed-up hair and the coy spark in the cobalt of his eyes. Suddenly he was feeling everything he had That One Friday, unhindered, rendering him powerless to some outstanding force that tightened his chest and knotted his stomach, that made his skin crawl with shivers and his cheeks burn. That drive, that unexplainable urge, that—

Riku knew he needed to be trusted before he could ever demonstrate what he felt. He blinked a few times, retracing the most recent thoughts that had rushed through his mind in search of a direction to take, and when his gaze landed on the Swedish Fish Sora had forgotten in his hand, he realized what he wanted to say.

"I'm not like him."

Sora's wan smile disappeared quickly, and even though he whispered, "What do you mean?", Riku saw for a fact—by the shadow zipping through his eyes, really—that Sora knew exactly what he meant.

"I'm not like him," Riku repeated, near to inaudible this time.

There was a silence then, as he waited for perhaps a response or at least a reaction from the younger boy, but Sora just stared, his lips in a thin line. Riku's eyes once again fell on the candy in his hand, and he put on a weak smirk, his humor deliberately inelegant, though he wasn't sure if it would effectively lighten the situation or not. He still gave it a shot.

"I promise... In fact, I promise on that Swedish Fish, the candy that you love so much," he pointed to the one in question, the one Sora was absently rolling between his fingertips again, "that you can trust me."

Sora's lips parted and he gaped at Riku for a moment, then down at the candy that he'd just pledged upon. He deadpanned for just a few more seconds and Riku began to wonder if he'd made the wrong choice by trying to make light of such genuine concerns, but then Sora dashed away his unease by lifting the red gummy fish to his mouth and breaking into a disappointed grin, laughing at its little candy face.

"I can't eat it now!" he protested, and Riku detected the undertone of relief threaded into his amused voice with an offhanded precision he felt rather proud of.

"Yeah," Riku said, grinning softly. "You better not."

Sora carefully set the Swedish Fish on the coffee table, separating it from the rest of the edible school of tiny red fishes, and as he eyed Riku up with a quirky little smile and analytical glee beneath his lashes, he let it be known that the promise on his candy was as real as ever. "You know," he said, letting his arm bump up against Riku's again, his discomfiture and frustration clearly draining away (and Riku mentally gave himself a pat on the back, because that smile was pretty much all he ever wanted), "there's this word for mushy stuff like that—'saccharine'. It means 'too sweet'. But I think 'sappy' works just fine." Sora's grin broadened. "Or 'dork'."

Riku felt his cheeks flare with that unexplainable heat and he smirked coyly at first, then promptly put on an appropriately condemnatory frown. "Sora, 'A Walk to Remember' is your favorite movie. I wouldn't be calling anybody a sappy dork if I were you."

"I'm a guy with a heart." Sora shrugged.

"I'm serious about my promise, Sora."

"I know you are—"

"Dead serious."

"I trust you, Riku." He paused to sigh, appearing oblivious to what he'd just said and Riku's head tipped in consideration of his words. "I don't know if I'm supposed to say 'thank you' or not."

"No, you're not."

Sora laughed again, but it was different. It was delicate and burdened, and Riku didn't think it matched him at all. He fell silent quickly, twisted at the waist to face Riku although his lashes were lowered and his gaze was focused somewhere other than the boy in front of him, and in the stillness Riku could feel something happening. He wasn't sure what it was, but it was flowering in the room with an oddly explosive feel to it, and sometimes when those omnipotent fingers reach down like tendrils and prod things into motion, one just shouldn't fight it.

Sora's eyes flickered up to meet Riku's, that piercing sea-green that captivated everything within him (and he didn't even understand how). A soreness tugged at his heart—and at the corners of his mouth—as he wondered if his stupid insecurity was tearing Riku apart; how long had he wanted to tell him all that, about wanting to be with him, anyway? Before that Friday? And how long before that?

The soreness became guilt that hurt something like a bruise in the middle of his chest, and as Sora craned forward, a delighted chill of anticipation tickled up and down his spine and out into his arms and legs, all the way down to his toes and fingertips where it tingled wildly. He was thinking, _Maybe this is good for me, to take control for once... _as his free hand, the one not clutching the couch cushion it rested upon, drifted up towards Riku's face. He brushed his knuckles along Riku's skin and the smooth feel of it sent ecstatic little pinpricks up his arm and into his cheeks, and he remembered exactly what that Friday had felt like. He'd been fine, he hadn't been thinking of _anything bad_ until Riku surprised him, and right now Sora yearned for that emotional freedom again. He knew it always took a few days after times he couldn't remember to get back into the groove of things, but there on the couch in the dark with one of his favorite movies playing and Riku Hayate in front of him, breathing just as nervously as he, Sora felt an anonymous weight slip right off his shoulders and he plunged ahead. He let his fingertips rest in the warm nook of Riku's neck and he eased forward, unable to look away until their lips connected, and that was when he clenched his eyes shut.

He felt Riku tense beneath his hand, but Sora knew it was alright because not even two seconds later, Riku's fingertips were moving up his side and around to his back, and he gave him a gentle tug with his left arm to pull him closer yet.

Sora turned his face away as he closed the distance (the word "distance" had to have been a major overstatement in this case), looking down at the lack of space between their bodies as it slowly diminished. The kiss had been brief but definitely not unrewarding; his heart pounded, his stomach twisted, and his mouth still buzzed with the ghost of Riku's on it. His arms fell down to his sides as the older boy tilted his head forward and his nose dusted the cartilage of Sora's ear, the breath puffing out against sensitive skin making him squirm pleasantly. A smile caught his face and he let his hands drift around Riku's waist, up his back—his frame felt so long and lean beneath his shirt—where he gently fisted his fingers in the cloth of his white T-shirt and let his lashes fall to half-mast.

"That wasn't so bad," Sora murmured, and Riku knew that even though his tone was jesting, he was very serious.

"Hnm," Riku grunted in response, because there really wasn't much he could say to that, and he shifted to relieve his right leg, which had fallen asleep beneath his left. At his movements, Sora's face reappeared from where it had practically been buried into Riku's shoulder and he let out a long breath, looking very much like a contented child.

"Riku..."

"Uh hunh?"

"Let's leave it at the Swedish Fish."

"...What?"

"All that crap—my dad, Roxas, everything that happened in the last two weeks. Don't forget it, but let's just stop worrying about it. There's no point in dwelling on it now. Leave it at the promise you made on my candy. How's that sound?"

Riku blinked, gaze traveling along Sora's visage as he spoke, examining every curve and every angle, and at the last of his words, Riku's eyes fell to rest on Sora's. He nodded, slowly, more or less in that Candy Boy daze again because he had his arms around him—finally, after so long, he was getting to experience what Sora _felt_ like, and that was amazing even apart from the kiss—and after a moment Riku murmured, "That sounds good."

What sounded better was the hush that followed, the one that neither wanted to break and the one with Sora nestled into Riku's shoulder with Riku's arms draped around him and his cheek smashed against his temple as the movie kept rolling. In the dim living room, Sora's right arm was looped around Riku's waist comfortably, his free hand absently plucking at the hem of the silver-haired boy's T-shirt, and he made sure that his nose was furtively pressed to the pale skin beneath those platinum locks so that when he breathed in, it was all Riku and nothing else.

And Sora thought for the second time in four years that maybe life was finally good again.

* * *

The Traverse City Public Library was an old building, four stories in total but with only two accessible to anyone other than management. Stepping through the broad doors, right from the get-go, the air smelled of aged paper, cigarettes, and dust. While the exterior was old, the interior was constantly updated; Riku slipped his hands into his pockets as he strode across a pristine white linoleum floor to the front desk, a circular counter in the middle of the vast first floor. The ceiling was the floor of the third level, as the level in between was merely a shelf-lined balcony running along the perimeter of the building with polished wooden railings and wide staircases.

Riku looked up at the second level, scanning the bookshelves for perhaps a sign that may direct him to the right section without having to ask the woman at the front desk a single thing, but even as he wondered this, he found himself standing before the young lady and blinking up at her rather casually, having to cock his head back because the desk was elevated a foot above normal.

He tossed silvery hair out of his eyes and opened his mouth to speak, the woman peering down at him imploringly, but then he heard the loud _squeak...slap-slap-slap-slap_ of someone diverting from his path and taking off in another direction.

Riku glanced over his shoulder, mouth still open, and watched as his blond companion disappeared amongst the sports books, the logo on the back of his shirt the last thing he saw—a big blue ZANARKAND in a lopsided oval.

He sighed, knowing that asking Tidus—loudest of louds—to come with him on a library excursion had been a perilous choice, and he turned his attention back to the librarian at the desk with a bitterly apologetic smile.

"Do you have a section for, ah...psychology, maybe?"

"Oh, yes, of course," the woman said, and up close Riku fully realized how old she was—maybe it was the effect of her black cat's-eye glasses and pearl necklace, or maybe she was just another modern-day Dorian Gray. She'd looked fresh out of college from the front entrance, thirty-five as he approached, but now that he was standing directly in front of her, Riku guessed about fifty. Forty at the least. Though she didn't look burdened by her age at all, and perhaps that was where the youthful glow came from.

His mother, on the other hand, was only thirty-four and seemed much older than this archetypical librarian.

"Do you see the water fountains over there?" She pointed and Riku followed her finger, nodding. She sounded absolutely euphoric that he had asked for such a deep subject matter, and he wondered how old she thought _he_ was.

"Okay," she clapped her hands together and the mock-pearl bracelet that matched her necklace swung daintily upon her right wrist, "the psychology section is right over there, and their Dewey is 100."

"Thank you."

"Do you mind me asking why a young man such as yourself is spending an afternoon at the library's psychology section?"

Riku smiled wryly. "Just reading."

"Really? I didn't think that's what kids these days did for fun." There was a hint of disdain to her voice and she smiled brightly, clearly categorizing Riku into a better group than "kids these days" generally were. Riku shifted his weight to the opposite foot, feeling rather uncomfortable under her gaze because he probably fit more with the "kids these days"—but that was beside the point.

"I find it intriguing," he mumbled as though it really mattered, and then sent a zealous _THANK YOU_ to whatever God was up there as Tidus interrupted in a hiss from across the library:

"Hey, Riku—dude—I just found the most amazing book about the Zannie-Abes!"

Riku half-expected someone to let out a loud, over-exaggerated "Shhh!" but no one did. The silver-haired boy cut a glimpse at the librarian with the cat's-eye specs and murmured, "Thank you very much." before hurrying off to tell Tidus to shut the hell up.

And when Riku was finally in the psychology section, tracing his fingertip along the spines of books, as unique to their owners as fingerprints, with his head cocked to read the titles, he stopped in front of a row numbered 150-160 to pluck a thick hardback off the shelf. Its spine read _DID: A Comprehensible Study_, and that was where his afternoon began.

* * *

**A/N: I am SO pissed that this took so long to get done. I've had a shitty week, that's pretty much the gist of it, and while I know that everyone is really patient, I still feel bad. **

**I told myself I wouldn't say this again, but once more I feel as though this chapter is sloppily put together. I think that's just the nitpicker in me; I'm always told different, and I really do appreciate everyone's opinions! 8D**

**Also, happy (early) Thanksgiving to all, because I won't be back until after. **


	11. Hold On

_**Candy Boy**_

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the amazing franchise © Disney and Square Enix; everything else © their rightful owners. **

**Ratings/Warnings: M—profanity, graphic themes, AU**

* * *

_Chapter Eleven_

* * *

Sora's lips were soft and warm. Riku knew this well; he'd kissed them quite a few times between that Sunday and the following. The kisses were slow at first, tentative and careful, as were the gentle touches. Palms merely dusting along curves and angles, mouths moving in a deep, leisurely synchronization. They happened in secret, performed as though they were fragile privileges that might very well disappear the next day—which, in a sense, they really were and both knew that, but they both also knew that the kisses were addicting and the touches were invigorating, and that was an explosive concoction of sensations for two teenage boys and a newfound relationship.

There was a wary, mutual understanding that all of it needed to be kept under wraps, and that was what they did for the first few days. Monday morning a smile in the hallway, Monday lunch a normal conversation that had undertones no one else would be able to pick up on, Monday afternoon in the Kaimana house with arms hooked about each other and noses brushing, the tickle unnoticed because the concentration was settled elsewhere; Tuesday morning a more devious smile in the hallway, Tuesday during lunch a stare-down that Sora won with another impish grin, Tuesday afternoon stretched out on the Kaimana sofa with fingers laced, words and laughs intermingling, Tuesday night a phone call snuck at eleven that ended near midnight; Wednesday morning a warm hand on a shoulder, Wednesday beneath the lunch table fingertips threaded together again, Wednesday afternoon kisses that became a bit more cunning than beforehand; and Thursday was the day that Sora flicked his gaze across the lunch table to Riku and mumbled, "Let's go upstairs."

Riku blinked, brows rising slowly in question although his eyes proved that he knew just what Sora was devising. And despite that, he still egged it on. He set his plastic fork down on the edge of his tray—Sora mimicked his movement, laying a Frito down atop his bag of mini-Oreos—and asked, "Why?"

"Because," Sora said, sounding more like a cranky kid throwing a fit than a fourteen-year-old boy wanting to move to a more private location. The one-word explanation came out "Be-_cause_" and was followed by an intense stare from beneath his lashes until Riku sighed and stood up, shaking his head. There was a smile somewhere at the corners of his mouth, just expertly hidden.

Kairi and Selphie watched as the two left their lunches and headed out of the cafeteria, and when Sora turned around as he walked—risking a collision with another student but thankfully not doomed for trouble today—he held up two fingers in a V and gave Kairi an apologetic grin, a dutiful nod. She could almost hear him, as though he were right next to her and not trotting out of the lunchroom with Riku Hayate: _Gimme two seconds, Kai, I swear_.

Selphie pulled her lollipop out of her mouth with a dainty _pop!_ and frowned. "Sora's really changed," she murmured, and Kairi looked to her in surprise. Selphie had sounded so...serious, not at all the giggly girl she usually was. Kairi frowned in turn.

"What do you mean, he's changed?"

"I don't mean it in a bad way. He's just gotten...braver. Or something. I don't know. He's come out of his shell."

"...Yeah, I know. I'm glad."

"I wonder what Riku's doing to him."

"_Hunh_?" Kairi almost choked on the mini-Oreo she'd stolen from Sora's abandoned lunch, and Selphie tipped her head back and laughed wholeheartedly.

"No, crazy! I meant, what in the world could Riku do or say to make Sora so comfortable that me and you can't? Do you think it's some kind of gender barrier?"

"Um..." Kairi brushed black crumbs away from her spot at the table and shrugged, not sure what to say without letting it slip that Riku and Sora were _together_ together. "I guess you could call it that. Sure."

"Hnm," Selphie reflected as she popped the watermelon sucker back in her mouth and propped her chin on her palm. "Whatever. Boys are silly."

Out of the cafeteria and on the stairwell, Riku stopped with his hands in his pockets and cut his gaze over to Sora. He glanced back coyly, a smile not even shadowing his lips this time. That was something new.

"...At school, Sora?"

"Not in the cafeteria, but yes. ...I want a kiss and I don't want to wait until we walk home and sneak one, either."

"But what if—"

"No one is upstairs during lunch. You know that."

"I know, but—"

"Come on, Riku..." Sora tilted his head, slumped, frowned in disappointment. Riku scowled but conceded, continuing up the stairs. He couldn't deny _that_. It wasn't that he didn't want to kiss him, either—God, no—but he just didn't want to have to explain to everyone if they got caught in the act.

"Wait for me." Sora skipped a step or two and slid his hand into the other boy's to keep in pace. Riku gave his fingers a light squeeze, ran his thumb over his knuckles, let the sensation of touching him burn its way up to his scalp before peeking at Sora over his shoulder. He blinked back, then grinned, an innocently intoxicated glow practically radiating off of him. Riku wondered if he looked that pleased, too. If he looked like he had a vast amount of thoughts flashing through his eyes, one in particular capable of inducing a blush if anyone else knew what it was—and after considering Sora's sudden obsession with hugging and kissing and staring into his eyes, Riku acknowledged, not without a proud little pinch of his gut, that the bond between them had virtually skyrocketed over the last few days. There was no more awkwardness, only shared feelings that sometimes became shared laughs and sometimes became shared kisses; the movements were smooth, as if preordained. But abruptly, for that one moment, standing at the top of the stairs in the empty high school hallway, Riku considered the circumstances and wondered if they were moving too fast.

_Not at all. I'm crazy about him and he's crazy about me, _his mind said.

_So how is this different from that shallow dating you mentioned before? _his more ratiocinative half countered.

_It just IS_, the other side argued back defensively. _I feel it._

_This is ridiculous_, an entirely different corner butted in, and Riku tossed hair out of his eyes before backing up a few steps, pulling Sora with him, until his head was against the wall and his palms were resting on Sora's hips and Sora was leaning against him with his fingers gracing Riku's ribs (and it didn't tickle in the least; that, or he didn't realize it did) and his lips were so close that Riku could already taste them, could already feel them. Sora lingered there, and Riku peered at him through his lashes, his conscience's bickering over and done with for the time being because he didn't care if they were moving too fast or not, he liked the way the both of them had taken off in a sprint at the sound of On Your Mark-Get Set-GO, and he also liked the new control Sora had found waiting somewhere deep inside, that devious little dominance that still made Riku feel like the leader, because even if he wondered why Sora was moving so fast, Sora was also kissing him now and Riku was kissing him back, soft and cute first, slow and ardent next.

And before he fully contemplated the effect, Riku let his tongue dart out across his lower lip—an unconscious action, seriously, because he didn't even realize it was going to sweep along Sora's lower lip like that, either. Honest to God.

Sora uttered a tiny grunt, his lips hanging slack as his eyes shot open and sought out Riku's. Riku felt his face grow hot, staring right back at him. Sora swallowed, licked his lips, glanced around the hallway, then suddenly became neurotic little Sora again and hid his face in Riku's neck.

There was a brief hush then, a pocket of atypical stillness in the hallway that Riku murmured into: "That was more than 'a kiss', Sora." He tugged playfully at the hem of the freshman's T-shirt, his face still flushed and his eyes still dazed behind the shocks of silver hair that fell in front of them. Said eyes flickered up and down the hallway, paying close attention to every sound and every corner. But they were _alone_, and that just seemed too good to be true.

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Sora, I can feel you grinning and it kind of ruins the believability of your apology."

"What are you talking about?" Sora laughed, his breath creating delighted shivers that shot out from the epicenter at the nook of Riku's neck, branching up and down his body. He stared across the hallway at the opposite wall as the different sides of his mind started up with their bitching again.

_Too fast. Way too fast. Too good to be true, remember? _

_How so? _

_You have to think about Roxas. About Sora's dad. About everyone else._

_Don't want to, sorry. Take a number and get in line. _

_But don't you wonder why Sora evaded a kiss before and now he wants them all the time?_

_It's called SORA IS COMFORTABLE AROUND ME. And besides, I like giving him kisses all the time. _

_What if it's hormones? Ever consider that? _

_Hormones. Hormones? You're pushing this off on HORMONES?_

_Technically, _you_ are, because we are all you and you are Riku. _

_Goddamn. I thought Sora was the one with DID. _Riku chuckled. Sora perked a bit, lifting his head from Riku's shoulder to mumble out against his jaw, "What are you laughing at?"

Riku shook his head, letting his arms fall to rest at Sora's tailbone. "Nothing. Just thinking."

"About what?"

"About us getting back to the cafeteria before the bell rings. I'm hungry, Sora."

"_You're_ hungry? Do you know what I had for breakfast?"

"Hnm. What could you find in Sora's pantry that is remotely edible...? I dunno. Did you have a pop-tart?"

Sora stared, darkly, as if mulling over whether to kick him, pinch him, or smack him. He opted upon none. "No, Riku. I had _nothing_. Well... Well, okay, I had some of my mom's coffee, but you get my point. _Nothing_ and I'm _starving_."

"It wasn't my decision to come up here."

Sora kissed his cheek, just beside his ear, and with that tender little peck sending shivers throughout Riku's frame, the brunet swung away and thumped down the stairs; Riku followed suit while straightening his collar and running a hand through his hair, a crooked smirk absently gracing his mouth. _The little fiend,_ he thought, this time with all his mind-parts and not one against the other. _He knows exactly what he's doing, that's what's scary. ...I bet he feels bad it took so long for us to have an actual kiss and he's making up for it._ And that was where his mind left the topic, dropping all the allegations that accompanied logics having to do with Mr. Kaimana, with Roxas, with all those things he'd read in the library books on Sunday.

He'd read two books, one about DID and another about sexual abuse, but the words had all blended into one document for him. A singular text that spoke something of sexual trauma and differing results that depended entirely on the individual patient, something of the effects on the victim's sexuality, something of attachment and security and the need for something to hold on to.

And, even if those _were_ the reasons Sora had suddenly become so much more determined to get the things he wanted, Riku didn't mind in the least. Sora trusted him, and that meant Sora was his. That was that. And that was good. Mission accomplished. He could enjoy his bounty now.

Outside, thunderheads rolled.

* * *

Friday, lunch was the cafeteria's version of Thanksgiving. Break began officially after school let out for the weekend and classes resumed the Monday post-holiday, December 3, so the lunch served a pseudo holiday special: sliced turkey swimming in gravy (which still had the distinct cafeteria food characteristics to it), mashed potatoes, stuffing, and a unique desert called cranberry jell-o, a school lunch delicacy that was notorious for it's stiff, jam-like texture and the chunks of cranberry that floated inside of it. Every year it remained untouched on the food counter, sitting on little white plates and shimmering beneath the lights. Not even common courtesy could make anyone try that Grandma-made-it-now-eat-it treat.

Riku had Sora's hand in his as they made their way through the lunchtime throngs with Kairi on the other side of Sora, her arm hooked through his and the two of them deep into a conversation about Kairi's mother and father and their divorce. It was something that Riku listened to from an objective standpoint, politely pretending to be aloof although his ears were definitely tuned in. He wasn't snooping; he just couldn't help being curious about Kairi (okay, yes, and her interaction with Sora) only because there were so many things he didn't know about her. All that Riku had gathered was that Kairi and Sora had been best friends forever, almost family as professed by Sora (and he got that vibe from Kairi, too), that they were very protective of each other as far as he knew, that Kairi was someone he'd put down quite apathetically in eighth grade and he had a feeling she hadn't forgotten about it, and also that when Kairi hugged Sora, Riku couldn't help but feel a little twinge of bitter possessiveness.

Sora respectfully pulled his hand out of Riku's as they passed by a table filled with out-of-season soccer players and their buddies. Riku thanked him for it with a glance in his direction, his free fingers hooked on the strap of his backpack to keep it in place at his shoulder. Sora nodded curtly, managing both his discussion with Kairi and the inaudible exchange between Riku and him with professional ease.

And as the three of them passed by the table, diverting towards their own, Riku suddenly felt very, very uneasy.

No, he felt watched.

He halted in the middle of the lunchroom alleyway, letting the two freshmen continue on to get seated at their end of the table. And, the only student in the open space between the two tables, Riku turned halfway to look at the congregation he knew was staring at him.

There was Tidus, as always. He had his usual lunch, consisting of milk and a donut, today's choice being an éclair. He was staring with something close to total helplessness, picking at the top ridge of his milk carton. Beside him sat Yuna and fleetingly, Riku thought, _Good, he finally asked her to sit with him._ But then his eyes were moving along the table again, because beside Yuna (who seemed completely clueless) sat Wakka, and he looked more perplexed than anything else. Then there was Tifa, and he couldn't read her expression at all. Yuffie had her head cocked to the side and at her probing eyes, Riku felt his gut sour. Leon looked just as pompous as he always had (or maybe that was just because he was so cynical and quiet) and Cloud was staring with evaluation crossing his brow. The others—Zidane, Lulu, Aerith—seemed to be staring only because everyone else was.

It was actually kind of ominous, a whole table turned and gawking at him.

What a fucking spectacle.

Riku opened his mouth to tell them—what? What was he going to tell them? In all reality, he had no idea what to say. _Fuck off_ didn't seem as though it would be vicious enough to really get his point across.

But he didn't have to worry about saying anything. Leon took care of it.

"You're looking pretty happy lately," he commented, just loud enough for Riku to hear the insinuative tone on his breath. A laugh escaped one of them—Yuffie. And it wasn't annoying; it was soft, a womanly chuckle, one that was impossible to decipher. Leon's stare—all their stares—seemed to intensify, challenging Riku to react, to tell them something that would prove their statement true or false. Because that was what it was: a group statement, not just Leon's statement.

"I am," Riku bit out. He could have said _Fuck you_ and meant the same thing.

"I'm glad," Tidus piped up, trying desperately to save Riku from the table's spiteful ploy. He looked around at them all, sharply.

"So am I." Cloud tapped the table a few times, and afterwards a smile broke through his carefully placed solemnity and spread across his face, and then he and Leon were laughing, laughing at some joke they'd shared and weren't going to share with anyone else. Riku could feel his blood boiling. What the fuck was their _problem_?

"Yeah, I'm glad, too." Riku nodded curtly, making sure they all saw the anger glinting in his eyes. "You know, it's not every day you decide to stop wasting your time on idiots like you guys."

"Ouch, man, that hurts."

"_Leon_." That was Aerith, with more sternness in her voice than ever heard before.

"What's wrong with you, Riku?" Oh, God, now Yuffie was joining in on the party. "When the hell did you start thinking you were better than all of us?"

"I _don't_ think that."

"What happened to Quicksilver, _hunh_?" The rest of the table had abruptly lost their voice in the matter. They'd fallen silent as Yuffie stood up, more out of incredulity than anything else, but all the same letting her be their spokesperson as she gestured across the way to the sophomore standing on the linoleum. She wasn't screeching, though; her voice was distraught. "What happened to hanging out at the railroad tracks until curfew? Or going out to cause a scene just because we could? What happened to soccer practice at Cloud's place and then grabbing some subs afterwards? And what happened to you being Quicksilver—that friend of ours that _wanted_ to laugh and joke with us, that _wanted_ to hang out with us outside of school, that _wanted_ to be _our_ friend, too?!"

Riku was speechless. _Quicksilver._ The nickname struck something deep in his chest, making him reign in his temper for just a moment to reconsider. Yuffie hadn't given him that nickname; Leon had, Leon at the railroad tracks shoving his money back into his pocket, Tidus and Wakka and Cloud and Zack and Zidane, all the guys and the only two girls that joined them outside of school and practice, Yuffie and Tifa, all standing around them on the tracks and gravel and agreeing that Riku was smart, feisty, and responsible, and declaring jollily that his new nickname was Quicksilver.

The rest of the table was stunned into a similar silence. It was different from the hush that had fallen when Yuffie had started talking, that was for sure, and Riku wondered if maybe they were all thinking of the same night at the railroad tracks. Whatever they were thinking, they regarded Yuffie with something like awe and something like surprise. And she just shrugged, as if to say _It's true, don't deny it_. Riku took a long breath, wondering now and once again why the blame was always laid upon his shoulders. The fault fell on all of them, not just him, but he knew that they'd never see it that way because he was only one and they were many.

"Get this through your heads," he said, levelly. "You guys were never my friends."

"That's not true, Riku! That's so not fucking true and you know it!" That was Tidus, trying to remain loyal to everyone at the same time.

"The whole world isn't against you." Tifa, clearly getting defensive. And Riku figured she had a right to. He and Tifa had had many a good time together, while the others were being reckless and they were staying sensible.

"Get lost, then. If you'll turn on us so easily, _you_ were the waste of time. Not us." Brown hair, being tucked behind an ear while stony eyes dared him to deny.

Something snapped.

Riku threw his bag to the tile floor and began advancing on Leon. The world tumbled into a bright fog, everything frozen except for him and Sora swinging one leg over the bench and then the other, and Riku's fingers were curling and he was going to cock back his fist but Tidus jerked him backwards so hard his shoulder screamed in agony. And the fog didn't lift; in fact, it deepened, clouding his senses of everything but that string of tension that had frayed for so long and then just given up the ghost. Riku yanked out of Tidus's fist, the voices around him rising into an incoherent sea of antagonism (the most he comprehended was "Tidus, DON'T EVEN!" and that ticked him off even more because Tidus could think for himself, thank-you-very-much), and he needed to get away before he was fighting the whole damn table and getting suspended, remembering that the last time he'd been remotely in trouble his dad had been too mad to even say '_Or else_', and before he knew it, he was out of the cafeteria and shoving open the school's front doors, knuckles clenched so tight that his fingertips ached, and the first things that started to bring him out of the fog of rage were the smell of cigarette smoke and the bite of the afternoon air.

Looking quickly off the stoop and to the grass, Riku's stomach dropped and with it went most of his anger. It just drained out of him with a heavy sigh, though his muscles continued to quiver with the remaining adrenaline, and after peering over the side of the high school's cement stoop, Riku murmured, "Someday you're going to get caught and you're going to be in a whole lot of trouble." He'd meant to sound averse, but had really only sounded weary.

Zack grinned, squatting in the corner where school brick met stoop concrete, a cigarette glowing between his fingers. "Nah," he said, and took a polite drag before speaking again. Riku watched as the smoke exited with his words, looking like velvet on the late November air.

"So, Hayate, what brings you rushing out into the cold?"

"Like you don't know."

"...I really don't."

"Bullshit."

"Okay, let me take a wild guess. Leon is having a Mr. Major Prick day today?"

"Lucky guess."

"And I bet Cloud is having a Mr. Prick day, too. For some reason, they have those days together."

"I'm not trying to start anything, but when someone just starts harassing me like that—"

"Riku, don't sweat it. Why do you think I'm out here risking suspension?"

The school doors flew open and Zack muttered, "Shit," as he immediately dropped his cigarette and dug it into the dirt with the heel of his boot; Riku's rage intuitively returned again, full force. "Beat it, Zanar-can't," he hissed, and it was his fault for assuming because the hands that grasped his arms and spun him around were not Tidus's, but Sora's.

And Sora was glowering at him, teeth gritted.

_Fuck_, he thought in no more than two seconds, _I forgot Sora was right there, too._

"Riku, you are so lucky no one saw you before you left."

Behind them and down a few feet, Zack didn't dare peek even though he was _really_ curious as to whose voice that was—they'd mentioned Riku's new friend, but Zack had never really paid much attention to the kid—but mostly he didn't peek because faculty could come beckoning them inside at any moment.

"Well...yeah, that's pretty lucky, isn't it. Are you sure?" Riku forced an uncertain chuckle, testing Sora's range of reaction. He _had_ to understand how all of that had unfolded, why he'd stormed outside before anything could happen—he had to understand something like that, right?

Oh, but he knew somehow that even if Sora did understand, it wasn't going to be as easy as that.

He'd left them in there in a fit of emotionally-charged chemicals, for Christ's sake.

"What happened?"

"Nothing, as you can see."

"_What happened_?"

"I said _nothing_, Sora—"

Sora gave him a little shove of his own, his glare sharpening. Riku's eyes widened and his edginess departed completely. Now he was just a little concerned. Okay, scratch that, he was pretty damn concerned.

Sora pointed first at the school, then at Riku, and the silver-haired boy recoiled slightly. "You can't go around just starting fights, Riku. I don't care if someone said something to you, you just _can't do that._ Alright? I'm asking you to just _brush it off_ if someone is being an asshole, because if you get all offended by crap and start fighting about it, everyone's going to get curious and that'll just dig your hole deeper. Make a whole new one, actually. A nice grave for the both of us."

_A nice grave for the both of us_. Nope, Sora had meant exactly what he'd said. Riku tensed. "Sora, _shut up_."

"Don't tell me to _shut up_!" Sora looked genuinely offended and appalled at the same time, his blue eyes sparking, and despite how much Riku appreciated him being totally unquestioning and consenting about the fact that Riku had almost been in a fight—unlike an adult whose logic would be much, much more patronizing—he was also rather alarmed by his earnest, protective response. "Damn, Riku, I know you're pissed, but cut it out! I'm asking you to behave, _that's all_. I just don't want anyone giving you shit about us—I could care less if people give _me_ shit about us, but if you get in trouble because of me, I'll feel horrible. Forever."

"Sora—"

"What did they say, anyway? To piss you off?" Sora was calming down gradually, now more worried than piqued. "I wasn't paying attention at first but just...before I knew it, I realized you were screaming and other people were screaming and there was just that _fight_ feeling in the air, and I wanted to stop you but I didn't because it was your argument and I didn't want to intrude—and why does it smell like cigarettes out here? _Riku_, were you _smoking_?"

"No, that would be me." To Riku's left and from behind the edge of the stoop, a hand popped up and waved obligingly.

Sora's eyes widened and his cheeks first paled, then darkened as he looked to Riku for explanation, but Riku was anything but placatory. He stared at the brunet, sharply, and his silent chastise got across just fine: _I told you to shut up, Sora. You see why now?_

"Oh." Sora laughed, awkwardly. "I didn't know—uh—"

Zack stood up and flashed his pack of Marlboro Reds in their direction for proof that he was indeed the smoker, then slipped it back into his pocket and repositioned his jacket's collar as he gave Sora a cordial smile. "Hey."

"Hi," Sora peeped, cheeks flushing once again as he associated the student's face with occasional visits to the table just across the way from his.

Riku grabbed Sora's wrist and dragged him back inside the building.

"Riku—" Sora hissed, eyes wide, "—I didn't know anyone was—hey, you don't think he understood what I meant, right?"

"I don't care."

"He didn't. He probably didn't. Right?"

Riku scoffed. "He didn't," he said, just to appease the younger boy. Because maybe Zack had, and maybe Zack hadn't. He didn't hang around the rest of them all the time, but he was around enough to be their friend. Riku scowled bitterly; that was a lovely coincidence. Did they have a special grudge against him in particular, or something?

"It's not like anything would have seriously happened," Riku spat below his breath, switching the subject back to the almost-fight. According to Sora and the fact that there were no teachers rounding up the students involved, it hadn't been too obvious. That was nothing new. The brawl Roxas had almost been in was a similar case, and that one had only been stopped because Mr. Ryota had been leaving at the same time as the student he'd kept after class.

"Riku, I...don't want to see you that mad again. Ever. In my life."

"Like I said, it's not like anything would have—"

"I'd never want to see you get in a fight. I'm sure you'd win and that's awesome, but I don't wanna see it." There was a perplexed, honest pause, during which Riku glanced at Sora and nearly melted at the look he found upon his face, something he'd never confess to anyone—not a single soul. And while Riku was struggling with this soft spot of his, Sora changed the subject. "That was one of your old friends?"

"Unfortunately."

"And they hate you for sitting with me." It was formed as a question, but Sora sounded as though he already trusted the answer to be affirmative.

"No. They're just selfish. They hate the fact that I found someone better than them."

"That's essentially the same thing, though. Riku, I don't want you getting in trouble because of me."

"I _won't_, okay? It's over. It's done. That was the end of everything, so you can forget about it." Riku frowned indignantly as they slipped back into the cafeteria, shoving his hands into his pockets. "Oh. And for the record, I don't just go around starting fights."

Sora's lips thinned and he glanced at Riku from below his lashes. He was still pretty worked up; his face was flushed and his eyes were skittish, flashing like aquamarine currents of electricity. "I know," he replied brusquely. "I know that, Riku."

Tidus met them at their table. He was sitting on top of it, with his feet on the bench, and if a teacher saw him he'd get a stern talking-to but Tidus risked it; that was just how he was. His arms were crossed and Kairi and Selphie (she had joined them sometime after Riku disappeared from the lunchroom) were staring at him as though he were some entity they hadn't believed existed until he'd appeared on their tabletop. Sora thought fleetingly as he and Riku approached the table—he could feel Riku's caution, his hypercriticism of the cafeteria and the people within it honed by the leftover adrenaline—that the two girls gawking at Tidus reminded him of Wendy and her brothers and Peter Pan in their window.

"Yuffie dragged him out of the cafeteria to calm him down," Tidus told Riku as he and Sora came to a stop in front of him, hands still in his pockets, knowing that the vague sentence would mean everything to Riku and practically nothing to the three freshmen around them. Riku nodded, glancing past the blond to that disreputable table, where quite a few of his old friends had vacated. Only Wakka and Lulu remained, along with a very sad-looking Aerith. Abruptly, Riku remembered the new face that had been there earlier and looked back to Tidus quickly.

"Where did Yuna go?"

Tidus noticeably iced over at that question. "I told her to leave before anything got messy."

Riku's shoulders drooped with the guilt that sentence laid on him, and he knew that it wasn't there because of the way Tidus had replied. Beside him, Sora stooped and began to gather up his backpack; Kairi started whispering to him so he plopped down on the bench beside her with his bag on his lap. Riku swallowed. "Tidus, man, I—"

"I just wish you guys would stop."

"I'm not—"

"I don't want to be the middle-man, okay? But I'm not going to take sides, either. Leon is having a bad day. Not that he should take it out on you, but I'm just letting you know that he was in a bad mood and you were an easy target. Simple equation of wrong time, wrong place."

"That's pathetic."

"Think about it this way, Riku." Tidus frowned deeply, and he was as grave as grave could be upon his buoyant visage. "Leon doesn't understand why you just stopped caring, so he's going to pick at you until he knows the truth. You know that's how he is. Remember when Yuffie started dating that one guy, and Leon was jealous so he was an asshole to her until she confronted him about it?"

"Actually, yes."

"There you go."

"That's a totally different situation." He paused pensively. "And about Yuffie's 'What happened to Quicksilver' tirade—those things stopped happening a while ago, so it's not all my fault. Why don't you tell them that?"

Tidus slid off the table and shrugged, skirting its corner with a dismissive wave over his shoulder. Riku felt the end of the conversation hang on the air a moment longer, unfinished and wounded, and then he realized that he'd truly pissed Tidus off again. But this time Tidus had simply walked away, deserting the discussion completely.

"'Quicksilver'?" Sora mumbled, appearing seemingly out of nowhere beside Riku with his bag slung over his shoulder and the white stick of a lollipop poking out from between his lips. Riku almost flinched at the sound of Sora using the nickname, because it only hit his ears with memories of imprudent times.

"Don't ask. Long story," he returned tersely, and retrieved his backpack from where it had somehow moved out of the open tile and over to the corner of the table. But when he straightened up, Sora was staring at him with such a sad kind of understanding that Riku felt his ears burn in shame. He felt as though Sora's eyes were powerful enough to see right through him, right through his detachment and into his core—and he knew somewhere that that talent was undeniably real. That it happened more than just on occasions such as these, where Riku was once again cold and Sora was once again quiet and they were both a little distant.

Sora pulled the lollipop from his mouth and glanced away, shrugging.

Kairi stood up, hooking her little backpack on her shoulder. "Hey," she said, drawing the attention of Selphie as well as Riku and Sora. "The bell is gonna ring soon, and then just three more classes and it's Thanksgiving break."

Riku actually felt gratitude for Kairi then, and that was more than a bit awkward only because he didn't know how to handle it. He moved to the side, letting his shoulder brush Sora's, and Sora glimpsed at him from between his lashes with a critical gleam in his eyes.

_I'm kind of mad at you_, those dark blue eyes said. _I'm mad because you almost got into a fight. I'm mad because you've got an attitude. I'm mad and I think this might be one of our first arguments. _

Riku ran a hand through his hair, glancing elsewhere because he just felt too much like a kid in trouble and waiting for his punishment beneath Sora's heavy gaze, and then the bell rang and Sora was hugging Kairi and Selphie good-bye and they were waving at Riku as they left, and Sora was running his fingers along his wrist because there was no good-bye kiss allowed in the lunchroom, and he smiled wanly over his shoulder as he disappeared into the lunch crowd and Riku stood there, staring into the bodies ebbing and flowing around him.

That was where the fog officially ended, and Riku felt a horrible headache coming on.

* * *

Sora was hungry all afternoon. It definitely wasn't his first time sneaking chips in the back of his Algebra class, but this time he slipped them up to his desk with a deep glower, damning Riku with every quiet bite he took. Because if Riku hadn't found it necessary to go all alpha male on his old friends, then they could have had a nice lunch together like usual. Sora liked cafeteria mashed potatoes; he'd been looking forward to stealing a forkful. Seriously. And he'd also been looking forward to nudging Riku's knee beneath the table for the majority of the twenty-five minute break, too.

Damn Riku for being a damn jerk and having to cause a damn scene because everyone knew the name Hayate but no one really cared about the name Kaimana.

And Sora was in an even worse mood by the time he met Kairi at their lockers after the last bell, because his snacks had been discovered while he was trying to work through a problem that called for his full concentration (he vowed he'd never leave his backpack open so wide ever again) and were promptly taken away. He knew that Riku would be waiting out on the sidewalk as always, hands in his pockets and his hair drifting about his face in the winter wind, and even though he was in a bad mood and still kind of frustrated with him, Sora couldn't help but want to hasten out of the building as he did every day—has he had every day for over a month now.

But today, as he threw unneeded books into his locker and began wriggling into his coat, Sora nudged Kairi's shoulder and after successfully drawing her out of whatever business she was rummaging in her bag for, he said, "I'll call you later. We can hang out tonight. Okay?"

Kairi blinked at him skeptically, one hand stuck in her bag and the other clutching it on her arm. She was an intelligent and observant girl—a master at these things called _signals_ and_ move-making_ after all the movies, books, and speculations she'd made over the past half a decade—and she knew that it was the beginning of Thanksgiving break, which ended every year with Sora's birthday. And it was a Friday today, at that. She also knew that Sora had a regular routine that he followed with Riku Hayate (this particular routine was something she had no _real_ understanding of, and that both discouraged and irritated her—in a good-hearted way, of course), and a Friday afternoon in any case was not to be passed up as perfectly good time to spend with a boyfriend. That was her view, anyway, but Sora was a boy and therefore could quite easily think differently...

And while Kairi chewed over these points in all of fifteen seconds, Sora danced hurriedly from foot to foot, his coat fastened up, his bag around his shoulders, and a few pieces of candy in his back pocket and the house-key in his right hip pocket.

"What about Riku?" she finally peeped.

He knew she was going to ask that.

"What about him?" he countered.

"Well, usually you... You guys are fighting, hunh?"

"_No_," Sora said sternly, stopping his anxious hop on the linoleum and regarding Kairi grumpily from beneath his lashes. The last thing he wanted was a referee, even _if_ said referee was the main reason there was a game going on in the first place. And what he said next was not an excuse at all; it was all truth, down to the last suggestive bit. "I just...wanna hang out with _you_, Kairi. Riku and I have the whole weekend, anyway." Sora felt a blush coming on at how suddenly comfortable it was to speak aloud—and so freely—about Riku and him.

Kairi shrugged, signifying that she wouldn't pry any further, and Sora visibly relaxed. Then another thought struck him and he hurried it out in addition—"Sunday is my birthday, too, so..."

She nodded and resumed the search throughout her bag. "I didn't forget," she cooed, and flashed him a devious smile as he rolled his eyes in what seemed like relief.

"Call me when you get home. You know, if you're helping with the play again or something."

It took her a moment to catch that one, and Kairi laughed in embarrassment, hiding behind her open locker door. "Shut up, Sora!" she cried from beyond the thin metal, and Sora grinned at her, cat-eyed, as he drifted out into the ebb and flow of hallway traffic.

"See you later," he called over his shoulder.

Selphie was right. A change had occurred within her friend, and it wasn't a bad one...but it was still sometimes hard to believe that he had days when she and Selphie avoided him to keep from being snapped at, days when he could barely lift himself out of his desk, could barely stifle his troubled frown, and days when he tossed his hair to the side and was no longer Sora but Roxas, Roxas with his _own_ share of different days to deal with.

Poor Riku.

Sora, Kairi considered as she finally found the chapstick she'd been digging for, could be very confusing sometimes.

* * *

Poor Riku indeed.

He waited there on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets and hair drifting in the winter wind, with his eyes panning a singular path—the beginning was the stoop, where people were still exiting the broad doors and braving the cold after being closed up in the warm building all day, down the stairs and over the throngs of students to the buses where he knew Tidus was probably sitting in the back because that was where the bumps in the road were felt the best, probably sitting there with Leon across the aisle and the both of them with arms crossed and frowns set waiting to get to their shared bus stop on 43rd, and past the buses Riku's eyes lingered on the road where some cars turned in and some turned out and some just passed right by, before his gaze began backtracking to the high school stoop again.

He did this three full times before finally catching sight of the little brunet in an off-white coat bopping down the cement steps and chewing what had an extremely high probability of being candy.

_He's avoiding me_, Riku thought. _Great_.

Sora gave him a rueful smile as he approached, and Riku thought once again, _Great_. The blue of his eyes was darker, a little clouded and a little anxious. It was a sentiment Riku had seen there many times before, but somehow it just seemed a bit more abashed as Sora stepped up beside him, close enough for his scent to hit Riku's nose with such invigorating power it sent chills up and down his spine. He could almost taste him, could almost feel him just by that whiff of AXE and skin—

"Hey..." Sora tilted his head, and Riku saw the change on his facial features. From subdued to decisive in one swift motion, and that was a bit unsettling.

"Hey." He shifted closer, knowing that to touch directly out here in the milling public—the public that really mattered at fifteen years old—was taboo. So instead, he tapped the memory of the feeling, the one he'd practiced into his fibers over the past week, and that sufficed as he flicked his gaze up and down the freshman beside him. Damn, he really was upset with him, wasn't he? He could see why, but come on, he didn't think it gave him the right to be moody all afternoon. What, was he going to tell Riku to not even come over or something—?

"You don't have to cook me dinner tonight."

Riku's breath stopped just for a second, and he realized he was holding it only after a flickering flashback to the rainy afternoon the two had met upstairs by the window and exchanged phone numbers—the day he'd been officially "hired" as a personal chef. The lunchtime that Sora had given him that laugh, that smile, those glances; the time he really gave him goosebumps and _seriously _had him floundering for words. And remembering that lack of hesitation, that simplicity of emotions, and then seeing Sora wavering before him with furrowed brows and dark eyes and a look of unbalance in his thoughts made Riku nervous. Made him _thoroughly _nervous. Almost frightened.

Fuck, he'd just gotten into an _argument_, Sora had _no _right to stint him—

Riku swallowed those thoughts with some effort and frowned, slipping one hand out of his pocket to subtly dust against Sora's. And, as if sensing Riku's concerns, Sora curled into an apologetic smile and hooked his first finger on Riku's, wiggling it in a gesture of reassurance.

_Emotional tectonics. Is that even real? Because I swear one of his plates just shifted again. _

"That's fine," Riku murmured, surprised that all the terseness buzzing on the back of his tongue did not come across in his voice. Sora noticeably relaxed. "Yeah, that's fine. I should probably spend some time with my folks anyway." Well, if that hadn't been the most bold-faced lie he'd ever heard in his life.

Sora caught the irony, as well. His smile broadened into an intriguing little smirk and his disposition softened further. "I told Kairi we'd hang out," he added, as though that in and of itself would be the ultimate explanation.

And, actually, it was. It didn't cover everything, but enough. Riku felt his shoulders droop ever so slightly with the release of tension and he sighed, pulling his hand away from Sora's to slide it back into his pocket. "Sure. Just... I dunno. Call me later or something."

Sora mumbled a quick, "Sorry" beneath his breath as he gave Riku a tight hug—tight and warm, but brief. Riku enjoyed it for a total of three seconds before glancing around to see who else was enjoying it from a spectator's end.

The strain that had accumulated steadily since twelve thirty-five dissipated a bit when they parted at the corner, and while Riku couldn't say he wasn't disappointed they couldn't spend the afternoon together, he didn't feel entirely scorned anymore, either, even if the disdain was out of good intentions. Sora, a pacifist. That seemed to fit well enough.

And besides, they had a week off for the holiday now, and he figured that was good compensation.

* * *

"Did you tell him your birthday's coming up yet?"

"No. But I will."

It turned out that Kairi hadn't been able to come over in the end anyway, but Sora found that balancing the phone on his shoulder as he picked the tomatoes off his burger was perfectly acceptable, too. Dropping the unwanted vegetable—or fruit, but he didn't really care either way; a tomato was a tomato and a tomato was disgusting—on the napkin near his Coke, he flicked his gaze up to where his mother swept into the kitchen, her hair wet and her pajamas already on although it was only six o'clock.

"Feel better, Ma?" he implored, and Kairi was respectfully quiet on the other line.

"Oh, yes," his mother heaved out below her breath, giving the boy at the table a smile over her shoulder as she opened the cabinet and withdrew a glass for her iced tea. "Getting there."

"I'm glad," Sora replied, and angled the phone closer to his mouth so only the speaker—and consequently Kairi on the other end of the connection—would pick up on his following whisper: "Just hold on. She'll turn on the news in a second."

"Okay," Kairi replied, and across Traverse City she busied herself with her homework, waiting patiently for the OK from Sora's end. She knew just how pesky parents could be when one wanted to have a private conversation. That was why she liked cell phones much better than house phones.

Sora watched his mom with big eyes, eating slowly with the cordless telephone balanced professionally between his cheek and shoulder. He waited as she filled her cup with iced tea, as she unpacked her own Steak-n-Shake dinner onto a plate (why she went through so much effort, he never knew; she was going to eat it on or off the wrapper, anyway) and then transferred herself to the sofa with a smile at her son. It was a tired smile, the kind of smile that meant _Give me a little bit and I promise I won't be a couch potato all night_. But there was also a knowing gleam in her eyes, a maternal _I know what you're up to_ that stopped Sora with a french fry headed to his mouth, and he took the receiver into his hand and raised his brows at her.

Yuuko turned on the evening news, and Sora exhaled into the phone, eating the fry that had paused an inch or two from his gaping jaw. "Alright, Kairi. TV is on."

"Thank God. I don't know how much longer I could have focused on Civics."

"Sorry."

"It's all good. _I'm _sorry I couldn't come over. But my mom just...eh, you know. I go to my dad's tomorrow so she doesn't want any hassle tonight. I don't know why, though. He just lives by the beach."

"It's understandable."

"The beach looks really cool in the winter."

"Hey, Kairi, do you have any plans during break?"

"Besides Thanksgiving, downtown, the pretty gray beach, and your birthday...nada."

Sora swirled a fry in the ketchup puddle he'd created on the corner of his burger wrapper. "Ditto. So I vote we should all do something on Monday."

"'We all'?" she asked, and Sora wondered if she really didn't get it or not. He guessed she did, but wanted clarification.

"Me, you, and Riku. We can go to Stonebrook, or we can hang out downtown by your dad's."

There was a silence on the other end of the phone and Sora didn't eat during it; he was too concerned to take another bite, his head tipped to the side and his brows furrowed as he waited for a response. Surely he hadn't upset her. He just wanted to hang out, that was all. The three of them. Like best friends. He thought that maybe it would be fun.

After the slight hush, Kairi opted, "...Everyone's gonna be at the mall, so let's just hang out downtown. Besides, there's more to do downtown."

Sora slid down and slouched in the chair, smiling faintly. "Great," he agreed, and washed down the ketchup-drenched french fry with a sip of Coke. "I'll talk to Riku about it and I'll call you tomorrow with the plan, 'kay?"

"...Alright." Kairi sounded a bit displaced, but brightened up remarkably as she hopped to a different subject, one that she could have more of an opinion on: "So, were you guys fighting, or not? Because I know he can have one _bad attitude_."

Sora glanced at his mom quickly and found her sitting Indian style on the white couch, plate balanced on her lap and iced tea suspended from her fingertips primly. And even though he knew she was caught up in the six o'clock broadcast, he still spoke in a low, cautious tone. "Not really. It was mostly...me being mad at him for causing a scene and giving me one of his _bad attitudes_."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Well...he _is_ a boy."

Sora cocked a brow, and he forgot that she wouldn't be able to see the affronted incredulity on his face. "And what am _I_, Kairi?"

She uttered a sheepish laugh, trying to make light of her blunder, but it was a weak attempt. "That's not what I meant, Sora. I mea—"

"That he's popular and tough and not afraid to punch someone when he's pissed?"

"...Sure." She sounded hesitant now, as if sensing Sora's sharp frown. Good. He hoped she did.

"I don't care if he's like that."

"Sora..."

"And I'm not jealous, either, if that's what you think it is. You remember seventh grade, don't you?"

"Sora, I didn't mean that you're not a boy, for pete's sake, and I'm not saying that you can't fight—"

"If he's going to go off on someone, then be an asshole to me when I didn't even _do_ anything, then yes, I'm going to be a little ticked. Sometimes—" Sora cut off, fingering the straw stuck in his Coke. He didn't quite want to admit something like that to Kairi, but she was silent because she was waiting for him to say something and even if he didn't, she'd likely still know what he was getting at. "Sometimes I just don't understand him."

"You guys won't be fighting when we hang out, right? That would be awkward." Kairi giggled ineptly, trying again to shift the conversation's mood.

"We're not fighting," he grumbled.

"Sora, can I...tell you what _I _think is the reason you're so irked?"

"Hnm?" He gave his straw another flick. A drop of Coke flew off its lip and across the table. He blinked.

"I think..." She paused, delicately. "I think that you're upset because it made you think of seventh grade."

Sora stared at his food. It was probably cold by now.

Seventh grade... Seventh grade had been a sweet disaster, a perfect paradox. He'd been twelve at the beginning and thirteen at the end, and sometime that Christmas was when things had gone suddenly awry. He remembered it with crystal clarity, and as he peered at his neglected Steak-n-Shake burger, Sora thought that maybe—just maybe—that clarity was because Kairi was right. Maybe he could remember that year's poignancy so intensely as he stared at his dinner because seeing Riku so enraged, so full of adrenaline and pride, had brought back everything that had happened from August of '03 to April of '04—

"Sorry," Kairi said.

"It's okay," Sora replied, and he couldn't deny that he was grateful she'd halted his train of thought.

"So, ah..." She searched for words as Sora gingerly touched the top bun of his sandwich, trying to determine if he should pop it in the microwave or not. "Yeah. Call me tomorrow and tell me what's going on."

"Sure," he murmured, frowning lightly and propping his chin in his hand. Thirty seconds would probably be enough to warm up his food. Maybe more than enough. "I'm gonna eat now...hang out with my mom a bit, too..."

"Don't forget to tell him about your birthday."

"You think I'm an idiot?"

"Mm..." She giggled, avoiding the question playfully. "See ya."

"Later, Kairi."

He stood as he hung up the phone, looking over his shoulder to his mother. She caught the movement, peered back as though expecting him to talk. He shook his head then, and left the handheld receiver on the table as he warmed up his food.

"Hey, Mom. Make some room on the couch, wouldja?"

"Sure, sugar."

Sora smiled lightly, careful to hide it behind his shoulder as he pulled his food out of the microwave, and it was because _sugar_ reminded him of _candy boy_ and that made him think of that other phone call he needed to make later on to apologize, to confer, to tell someone that his birthday was a week from Sunday. But for now—

"Ma, let's watch a movie."

* * *

**A/N: Thank God for Thanksgiving break.**


	12. Ocean Avenue

_**Candy Boy**_

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the amazing franchise © Disney and Square Enix; everything else © their rightful owners. (Yes, chapter title © YC)**

**Ratings/Warnings: M—profanity, graphic themes, AU**

* * *

_Chapter Twelve_

* * *

_Yeah, that's fine. I should probably spend some time with my folks anyway._

Right.

Riku straightened up briefly, stretching his back to soothe the aching of the muscles between his tailbone and ribcage. The repetitive bend-down, get-up motion of transferring wet clothes to the dryer (it was acting up again, and he hoped to God it wouldn't break because it was too cold to walk to the Laundromat now and Tidus's obligation to fix it would probably be accompanied by a stiff silence anyway) only became the rigid motion of folding the dry clothes and placing them in stacks to be distributed to their respective drawers.

The lightbulb in the hallway was dim, but it was bright enough for him to see what he was doing. The kitchen light was on and the house still smelled like the Stouffer's he'd popped in the oven earlier; the dishwasher was running, the television was set to channel five, and his hair was wet because he'd just gotten out of the shower. The clock in the kitchen ticked on at a quarter past eight, and it was the best Riku could do to keep his thoughts on the clothing in his hands and not on the silence of the telephone.

Really, this was their first fight?

_Really_?

There _had_ to be more to it than Riku was seeing. No, he _knew_ there was more to it by the way Sora had been acting because Sora was a goddamn intriguing kid, and Riku had reason to believe that Sora had staid grounds for being the way he was about certain things, anyway.

And Leon... Ooh, the next time that guy called him out, he'd really show him who was the waste of time.

And hopefully the dryer _would_ break, because then he could call Tidus to come and fix it and while Tidus was grease-monkeying it up with the neglected Hayate toolbox, he could probably get some kind of apology out that the blond boy would accept and amongst the clank and thuds of a repair job, he could steady what he'd accidentally knocked off balance (Tidus's hurt feelings, he would admit, were definitely his fault).

"Hey, Riku..."

He cut his gaze to the right and into the living room in answer of his father's call with, ironically, one of the man's white T-shirts halfway folded in his hands. "Hunh?" he replied, tossing damp hair from his eyes and turning slightly, facing the other room, making sure that that was indeed what he was seeing. Ugh, it was kind of abhorrent. His dad was leaning over the arm of his blue-green cushioned throne, his legs propped up and crossed at the ankles, and he grinned at his son with something like childishness. A crooked leer, complete with imploring eyes and if he had waggled his eyebrows, Riku would have slugged him out of his lazy-chair because that expression only looked good on Sora.

"Would you get me a drink? S'been a long day—" Here there was an over-exaggerative emphasis on the _long_, stretching it into _loooooong_. "—and I'd appreciate it. If you didn't mind getting it for me, that is. I'm a lazy, lazy man, you know."

The woman in the burnt-orange recliner opposite the room from her husband made a gentle scoffing noise, and Riku decided he didn't want to know what it was today that made them tetchy with each other.

"Sure, dad," he muttered, and managed to keep the distaste out of his voice as he finished folding the white shirt and tossed it onto the pile atop the washer. He wasn't sure which he despised more—his father trying to play it cute, or his father being threatlessly assertive.

The bottles of Budweiser clinked as he wriggled the next one out by the neck, and it was as he swung the refrigerator shut that the phone began to ring. Riku nearly jumped for it. "I got it," he declared quite possibly _too_ eagerly, but his mother merely nodded and his father only turned up the volume, and both really didn't seem to mind whether he picked up or not. The closest telephone was on the wall beside the fridge, and, having a little hunch of who it might be on the other line, Riku grabbed the receiver off the cradle with his left hand, a chilled bottle of beer sweating in his right. He answered it with the limp cord dusting his shoulder. "Hello?"

"Can I speak to—"

He slumped in relief, couldn't prevent a small smile from perking at the corner of his mouth. "You're speaking to him."

"—Riku?" Sora sounded a bit embarrassed for not recognizing him in the first place, and Riku thought that was perfectly okay.

"Yeah. 'Sup? You know, it's been..." He looked at the clock. "...about five hours or so since we last talked. Glad I at least got a phone call. I thought that maybe you were going to hate me all weekend."

There was a small pause, and in it, Riku could hear the silent hum of Sora's petulant frown. He could even see the look in his eyes, that exasperation that was only halfhearted. The other half was indulgent. He knew it was. Sora took in a slow breath, knowing that the few seconds that had passed without a response had made their mark on the boy with the platinum hair across the city, and when he started talking Riku heard a wry smile. "It _has_ been five hours. I'm glad you're keeping track, Riku." The smile had become a grin. It was like Riku had telepathy or something. He could just see Sora, sitting on his couch or maybe even his bed, which would mean he was alone in his bedroom with the phone (this was territory Riku still hadn't really trespassed yet, only peeked through the doorway now and again when he was in close proximity to the threshold and on this past Wednesday he'd sat on the floor with his back to the wall, absorbing the feel of the sanctuary he was in, as Sora rummaged around on his desk in typical oblivion for a CD to play). Perhaps even with the lights off. Door closed, sitting on his bed with his back to the wall and his head propped against that poster of YC's _Ocean Avenue_ album art, his toes maybe curling on the edge of his mattress unconsciously and his knees drawn up loosely and the phone to his ear and his eyes on the ceiling, thoughtful and cunning and soft all at once, and his smile had become a grin.

"I am," Riku replied.

_Lame. Lame, lame, lame_.

"I'm not really mad anymore..."

"That's good. Why were you..." Riku remembered abruptly that he was in the kitchen and his parents were a mere few feet away, albeit with the television on and the volume up, and as he recalled this, he also realized that he had somehow gotten the telephone cord wound about his torso. Ducking his head and stepping out of the potential tangle, he finished his question in a lower voice, just in case his parents' ears were as sensitive as his, "...mad at me, anyway, Sora?"

"...It's a really long story."

"I have time." But he really didn't. The Budweiser was getting slippery and his palm ached from the cold, and his dad would probably notice he was taking an abnormally long time to get a simple bottle of beer which meant there was more of a reason for him to pay attention to what was occurring in the kitchen, so... "Um, actually, give me just a sec, okay?"

He heard the soft "Okay" in response as he looked for a place to lay the phone while he took the beer to his father. After a moment, he settled for the top of the refrigerator, and stood on his tiptoes to set the receiver on it, the cord swishing along the magnets and papers fixed to the appliance's doors.

"Sorry, Dad," the boy mumbled as he handed the tawny bottle over, wiping his wet palm on the denim of his thigh. His father took the beer and shrugged in accordance, giving his son a stern _Don't ruin my mood _glimpse as he removed the cap of his drink with a crisp _crack_. The smell of it hit Riku's nose and the flesh between his brows wrinkled gently. "Mom," he implored, looking away as his father threw back a sip, "do you need anything?"

"No, honey. Thank you."

"Sure."

He grabbed the handheld receiver off the coffee table as he left the living room and opened up its line, beckoning, "Alright, Sora, I'm back." He stood on his toes again and swept the other phone off the top of the refrigerator, hanging it up and pushing hair out of his eyes as he dodged the corner into the hallway and—glancing in contempt at the laundry that still needed to be folded—darted into his bedroom, closing the door behind him and leaning against it.

"So," Riku picked up the open end of the conversation now that he had more privacy and less distractions, "I have time. Why were you mad at me?" He brushed his hand along the wall, flipping his light on.

"Well... It sounds kind of stupid."

Riku examined his room with his mouth puckered out to the side in thought. ...Nah, no lights. He switched the ceiling lamp off and trudged across the carpet to his bed, feeling out in front of him with his free hand so he didn't run into his chair or something. "Why do you say that?"

"Becaaaause...it sounds like something a girlfriend should say." Sora punctuated with a laugh, and Riku really couldn't tell if it was nervous or not. It sounded genuine enough. He closed his eyes, hooking his free arm beneath his neck as he dropped down to his bed, with one leg dangling off the side and the other bent, foot beneath his knee. He could have thought of a million different things to say in reply to that uncertain confession, a million different things ranging from sarcastic to simple to sappy, but one specific thing dominated his mind at that moment—and that was the image of Sora sitting on his bed in the dark, back to the wall and head on the Yellowcard poster, toes curled on the edge of his mattress. Maybe his free arm was propped on his knees, his fingers fumbling with the hem of his pants. Or perhaps he wore shorts to bed, like Riku did. Or_ perhaps_, he just wore his boxers to bed.

"Riku?"

_Shit. Stop picturing him without pants on and talk. _"Hunh?"

"Am I right? Is that why you're quiet, because I'm right?" There was a hint of humor in his voice, but there was also a little twinge of concern. Concern he had a right to, really.

"No," Riku said. "No, no... Come on, don't be stereotypical."

Sora laughed. This time it _was_ nervous.

"What sounds like a 'girlfriend' thing to say?" Riku tried to clarify, and his foot began to wag compulsively between the edge of his blankets and the floor.

"That I don't want you to get into a fight."

"You're mad at me because I almost got into a fight?"

"...No. I guess."

"That's understandable."

"You gave me an attitude."

"Okay, well—"

"And _that_ is what really pissed me off. Because _I _didn't start anything with you."

"...Sorry."

"So...does that make me sound like your typical girlfriend? 'Ehh, don't get into fights, don't cause scenes, don't give me a 'tude'. Hnm, do I play the part well, Riku?"

He blinked for a moment, at first a little confused as to why Sora was so adamant about the 'girlfriend-boyfriend' mold, but then his words really sank in and their playful but oh-so chagrined tone softened the edges of concern, and Riku chuckled. Chuckled a bit, then chortled, then curled upward gently as full-out laughter shook his frame.

"Sora, you're not a girl and that's not a 'girlfriend' thing to say," he snorted. "It's perfectly reasonable, and if I were you I'd probably feel the same way. Jesus, Sora, for being so antisocial, you sure as hell know how society thinks a relationship should be_._"

Sora was silent for a moment after that, then sputtered out, "Well, we're both boys, Riku. _One_ _of us_ has to be the girl here, and you'd probably just refuse before giving it a shot anyway."

Riku bit his lip and the giggles were building up in his chest so heavily that his eyes were watering. No, he couldn't laugh. Not at that. Sora sounded so _serious_, so determined to get this romance thing right, and that was so endearing in and of itself, but just the way he'd _said_ that was... Riku choked on the laughter as it bubbled up his throat, uncontrollable any longer. He rolled to his side and into a ball, laughing loud and true, and it took him a second to realize that Sora was laughing hysterically with him.

"I didn't mean it like_ that_, Riku!"

"I know, but—God, Sora, you're funny."

"I just felt like it was typical of a girlfriend to—"

"Boy_- or_ girlfriend would be ticked if their boyfriend—or girlfriend, whatever—gave them an attitude."

"I guess...that's _mostly_ what I'm pissed about. I mean, if you got in a fight, I'd be really worried, but I wouldn't stop you." Sora paused, drew in a steadying breath. "And, yes, if it's possible, I'd want you to _not _cause a big scene. To just...be careful, is all."

"Sorry for copping you an attitude."

"It's alright."

Riku heard the muffled sounds of bedding, and thought with a minute chill that maybe his mental imagery wasn't too far off from the truth. Sora was probably laying down now, relaxing. Briefly, Riku wished he could be laying there with him, in the dark of his room with the_ Candy Boy_ scent surrounding them and the feel of smooth breathing and idle arms, and posters of bands, Destiny Shores, and little photographs taped up around the bed.

"Sora...?"

"Hnm?"

"Don't...think of us in terms like typical boyfriend-girlfriend stuff."

"I was...kind of joking, I guess, but I—"

"You don't have to follow any rules like 'girlfriends do this and boyfriends do that'."

"Riku..."

"You're my boyfriend, alright?"

And it came out so naturally, just like that.

"Riku..." Sora said again, and that was it. A hush followed, a fragile one, and while it stretched on, Riku really didn't know quite how to feel. He didn't really even suppose he could guess what Sora was feeling, either, but the balance of the conversation had become a mixture of emotions—apprehension, nervousness, innocence, authenticity. It was a simple silence but it was entirely complex. It was just one of those that called for no end, where words weren't searched for in hopes of ending it, because it was a comfort.

"Yeah."

Riku blinked, drawn out of the trance-like hush. "Ah...hunh?"

"Yeah. I am." Sora followed up with a tentative chuckle.

It took him a moment to connect the loose ends but when he did, Riku smiled weakly. He opened his mouth to reply, but had nothing to say. Thankfully, Sora didn't require a response. It was just succinct—that moment, and that was it. Riku heard the shift of blankets again, could see him with his mind's eye getting more comfy on his bed, and then Sora spoke again:

"Hey, um...do you have anything planned on Monday?"

Riku chewed on this briefly, as though he really had a mental schedule to review. "Nope."

"Now you do." He could hear that contagious grin again, buzzing in the background of the line's connection.

"Uhh...really."

"Yeah. Me and you are going to meet Kairi downtown."

"Oh?" His brows rose absently, and he hoped he hadn't sounded _too_ querulous.

"Yeah...her dad lives downtown...she's gonna be there for break and I figured we could all hang out or something on Monday. She's up for it, so if you are, then..." Sora trailed off. Riku closed his eyes, could see Sora with his own baby-blues wide open and trained on the ceiling, big and unadulterated with sincerity and hoping that Riku was okay with the plans he'd already made. Riku took a slow breath through his nose, tapped his fingers lightly on the plastic of the handheld receiver, then relaxed a bit with the long sigh that followed. Getting together with Sora and Kairi downtown wouldn't kill him. Seriously.

Vaguely, he remembered eighth grade and Kairi's question before the last bell rang; remembered how she acted around him now, how she never spoke a word about that day two years ago, how he could barely tell in her glances that it was still there in her memory, how despite all of that she still dedicated everything to keep Sora happy, to keep Sora and Riku essentially on the same page.

What an amazing friend.

"Sure," Riku said. "That sounds great."

"...Really?" Sora sounded genuinely surprised. That amused Riku—and saddened him in a way.

"Yeah."

"Um... Okay. Well, you can come over here on Monday and we can take the bus there."

"I could ask Wakka to drive us," Riku suggested before he added the day's events to the equation. ...Ah, well, Wakka wouldn't have a problem with it. Their only problem would be fitting the two of them into the backseat of that yellow bumper-sticker collection on wheels.

"Would he?"

"Most likely."

"Then we'll do that."

"I'll let him know."

Across Traverse City, Sora chewed his lower lip gingerly, staring up at the ceiling of his bedroom with an arm flung across his forehead and the cordless receiver pressed to his ear. He opened his mouth to say something more, but all that came out was a little, "Uh..." so he closed his mouth again and fiddled with a few strands of hair. _Birthday, birthday, birthday. Say it, dammit. Just say 'My birthday is a week from Sunday. On the 2nd. Do you want to stay at my house Saturday night for my birthday?' _Sora gave an exasperated huff of breath and hair fluttered off his temple, then floated back down, tousled. If he told Riku his birthday was on Sunday, and Riku agreed to spend the night, then Sora would also have to tell him that Kairi was going to spend the night as well. That it was something like tradition, but that he wanted Riku there this time, too. Of course, he felt it was almost a given that Riku would want to come, but with Kairi there at the same time...? He just had a feeling that it would throw Riku off completely, that it would make him close up again, make him uncomfortable, make some things he might be planning suddenly prohibited and that that would make him say _no_.

Okay. He'd tell him about his birthday _after _they all hung out on Monday. That way Riku had no excuse.

There was an abrupt knock on his bedroom door. He jumped, almost dropped the phone. "Hunh?" Sora called, sitting up on his elbow. The bag of Swedish Fish that had been sitting on his chest slid off and hit the bed, a few little candies tumbling out onto the sheets.

His mother poked her head in from the hallway, giving him an apologetic smile. "Hey, sugar. I'm laying down. Do you wanna come watch TV with me for a little bit?"

"Sure," Sora said, swinging his legs off the side of the bed. His mom nodded, smiling further, and left his door open as she disappeared into her own room. Tucking the telephone closer to his mouth, he pushed candy back into the yellow bag and stood up, holding his door _almost_ fully closed as he murmured into the receiver, "Sorry, Riku. I'm gonna go hang out with my mom a little before she conks out. Do you want me to call back when she's asleep?"

Riku blinked a few times in his own room, brows climbing up his forehead. _Do you want me to call back when she's asleep?_ just sounded so devious. And he almost gave in. "Nah. I'm probably going to lay down, too."

And it was only after they'd both gone and he'd dropped the phone to the floor beside his bed, rolled over and buried his face into his pillow, that Riku realized he really didn't want to hang up in the first place. He decided it was very lonely without Sora's voice.

* * *

The moment the little yellow car came screeching up to the curb and he saw the kid behind the wheel adjusting his beanie as two others piled out, Reї the Cinnabon barista felt very full of dread. The last thing he wanted on a perfectly peaceful, perfectly fruitful Monday afternoon was a bunch of wild teenagers coming in to wreak havoc on him and his poor coffee machines.

"Hey, Koko—" he called over his shoulder, and the petite girl appeared from a room of stainless steel behind the counter, wiping her hands on her apron.

"What's the matter?" she peeped, giving him a narrow stare and raising her brows. He frowned indignantly and jabbed a subtle thumb to the entrance of the café as the bells chimed and that goddamned group of kids came in to ruin their otherwise nice shift—

"I don't get it," Koko said, and when Reї turned away from her she left; he looked over his cash register at the two boys walking in, as beyond the glass facade of the building, the yellow Mustang with the tanned driver took off from the sidewalk, gears squealing in pain. Okay, so maybe he'd been a little off the marker, but... The barista turned around again to elucidate his suspicions, but found the threshold behind him empty.

So instead, he crossed his arms and focused his attention on the last to enter the tiny Cinnabon. They didn't look too shabby, but they still didn't look like angels to him. If they started fucking around, he'd show them who was boss. He'd have them banned from every Cinnabon in the city. In the five _surrounding_ cities. Reї didn't like out-of-control teens, no sir, he didn't. Never was one, never wanted to be one.

The two boys seemed to be acquainted with the girl who had been sitting at the window for the longest time; they walked over and at the sight of them, she threw her arms around the brunet boy and cried out, "Hey! How are you?"

Damn high school kids. The one that made Reї the most uneasy was the brunet; he just screamed _troublemaker_, and the boy standing awkwardly to the side with his arms crossed was an obvious _accomplice_. A punk with hair so messy it almost defied gravity plus another with long hair and a general look of belligerence about him added together with a bubbly girl waiting for them in a café was just an equation for _delinquency_. It was so obvious. And even when the brunet played all cute and innocent and laughed like he hadn't expected the girl to tug him down onto her lap, Reї still knew that they were going to be trouble. Now all that was needed to complete the picture was the kid with long hair sitting on the tabletop, and that was when he could demand they Cut It Out Before He Kick Them Out, and—

Aw, crap, they were walking to the counter.

Who the hell had hair that color, anyway? Was there such a hue as platinum-_silver_ now? Jesus-Krispies, how many times did he have to bleach his head to get _that_?

Oh, right, he was working the front today, wasn't he?

"What can I get for you?"

That was when the three of them had to discuss their choices. Why on earth they hadn't done that _before_ they approached the counter, Reї didn't know. But hey, what _did _he know about today's youth besides the fact that they were unbelievably vulgar?

"I'm just getting a coffee." Bleached-silver boy.

"Does one of you want to split a cinnamon roll with me?" The brunet, looking a lot tinier when in closer proximity.

"I will." The girl, her maroon hair (damn kids and their outrageous hair dyes) dotted with brightly-colored barrettes and bobby-pins.

"I guess I will, too." Bleached-silver boy sounded a little moody.

"Great. Kairi, what else are you getting?" How old was this brunet? He sounded in the last legs of pre-pubescence, but Reї had to be wrong...unless pre-pubescent boys were delinquents nowadays, too.

"Um..." The girl chewed her lower lip and looked up at the menu over Reї's head. _Hurry it up, little girl_, he thought. _The place might be empty now, but at the rate you're going..._

"Well, I'm just getting a coffee, so..." Bleached-silver boy seemed to be just as impatient.

"Hold on, Riku." Wow. That brunet could give some smoky glances.

"I'm sorry you guys. I'm taking forever, I know!" The girl hopped from foot to foot, whimpering softly. What, was that supposed to be cute? Reї frowned deeply. Damn high school kids.

"What if we split a drink, too, Sora?"

"What kind of drink?"

"A frap."

"But it's cold out."

"Cinnabon's frappuccinos are delicious."

_Yes_, Reї thought. _Yes, they are_.

"Okay, a frap then."

"What flavor?"

"You choose, Kai."

"I'm just ordering my drink now. You guys are too complicated." Bleached-silver boy stepped in front of his two friends, money already in hand. The brunet frowned; the girl pouted.

"Riku, you're a jerk."

"So I've been told."

"I know what I want now."

"Can I have a small coffee, please? Hazelnut and French vanilla."

Reї shrugged as he tapped the order in, more exasperated than suspicious any longer. Hell, if these three kept his boredom at bay for a while, he didn't mind having to yell at them to calm down every now and then. "Three eighty-one."

The girl—Kairi, he'd deduced; and through spectacular inference, he'd figured that the puny blue-eyed rascal was Sora and the bleached-silver punk was Riku—ordered next, the brunet drifting somewhere between the others.

"Can I have a cinnamon roll and a cappuccino Chillatta?"

"Oh, Kairi, get a hot chocolate, too!"

"And a hot chocolate."

Reї frowned further. "Nine seventy-three."

"Here you go," she sing-songed, handing him the money. Sora the brunet nudged her shoulder.

"You didn't have to pay for it all, Kairi."

"Sure I did. My treat."

"Gee, thanks," bleached-silver boy echoed from the other end of the counter, where he was waiting for his drink. Koko had pulled her usual Houdini and had appeared out of nowhere to run the machines.

"Be quiet, Riku," the other boy said, and he and the girl laughed together.

Ah, so maybe bleached-silver boy was a third wheel... Interesting. Although, he would have guessed the bleached-silver kid would have been the busy one, not the other way around.

He let Koko take care of their orders by herself; she was a busy bee sometimes, and if one crossed her path even to help, she became very bitter. What a workaholic. Instead, Reї leaned against the counter, watching as other customers departed and the distrusted ones collected their drinks and returned to their table, marveling just as much as he had been earlier at how slow this Monday afternoon was. And at Cinnabon, of all places. Reї guessed it had something to do with people leaving the city for the holidays.

The kids really weren't that interesting back at their table. They talked about something or another, something of insignificance that meant all the world to high school kids like them. They laughed loudly at one point, making a few others look and causing Reї to mentally prepare a reprimanding speech as he physically prepared an original-blend coffee, but after he'd capped that and given it off to the waiting customer, they'd calmed down again.

There were no spitballs, no obnoxious volume, no stupid actions. No insolence at all. Which was odd, if you asked Reї. So as he took orders and shared the machines with Koko, he resorted to insinuations: assumptions and scandals he conjured up that piqued his curiosity as though they were real. People-watching really was quite amusing. No wonder so many succumbed to it.

The kid with the very messy hair left the table and disappeared down the hall where the bathrooms were, and the bored barista focused his attention on the two remaining at the table. There seemed to be a general discomfiture about them, something that supported his hunch of a third wheel, but that left too much room to be sure.

Kairi the girl stirred her Chillatta (it had melted quite a bit by now) and wouldn't look at Riku the bleached-silver boy. He sat with his hands folded on the table, hair all in his face and awkwardly silent. She had her legs crossed at the ankles, and Reї really thought that maybe they were just going to stay awkwardly silent until the other boy returned to balance them out, but then the bleached-silver boy said something and the barista's eavesdropping concentration was reeled back in.

"Kairi... You're alright. You know that?"

"Ah...what?"

"You're alright."

"'Alright'?"

The boy chuckled and leaned back in his chair, one arm slung over its rear slats. Reї hated it when boys sat like that, trying to look all cool. "Yeah," bleached-silver boy said, suddenly serious again. "You're..."

He was speaking too softly for Reї to hear him from the counter. He pieced it together, thinking that it went along the lines of _You're a good person_ or _You're a good friend_, but it could have even been _You're not as bad as I thought you were_. It was probably that last one; he just had a feeling by the way the delinquents had been interacting since they arrived.

The girl ducked her head, hiding her face with her bangs. "I haven't forgotten eighth grade," she said, and Reї could almost feel himself leaning over the counter to hear better. Was that a reference to perhaps a scandal in the past? Was he not just assuming things? Maybe it really _was_ a love triangle. Those seemed to be common among high school kids nowadays.

"Then...why...?" The bleached-silver kid trailed off, but Reї couldn't be sure that he hadn't continued talking because he'd noticeably lowered his voice.

"Because," Kairi said, and she tilted her head now. She used a lot of body language. She smiled. "Because I believe in true love."

"That's ridiculous." And that was the loudest thing that had reverberated from their table, which was surprising and fascinating at the same time.

"No, it's not," the girl countered stubbornly.

"I think maybe you've just seen too many chick flicks."

"Riku, I know a lot more than you give me credit for. What do you think I am, some high school slut?"

"No, Kairi, I don't, but I don't understand how you could jump to such serious ideas—"

"I haven't forgotten eighth grade, and I haven't forgotten the way you two look at each other, either." Her voice suddenly dropped, and Reї heard the other boy's name mentioned, so he guessed the girl had said something in warning like _So-and-so's coming back to the table now._

They talked the brunet into dumping their trash, and the nosy barista knew for a fact they'd done that so they could finish their conversation. _Love triangle. Totally_, he thought, and snatched a rag from below the counter, deciding that Koko could cover the counter for a bit because the tables by the front window needed a good wipe-down.

"I'm not trying to insult you," the bleached-silver boy was saying below his breath.

"...Okay," the girl said, as though dubious.

_Ooh, better hurry_, the barista urged silently, amused, _the other one is coming back_.

The girl—Kairi—seemed to notice this as well, and she started turning away. Reї saw it all from the corner of his eye: the brunet joined them just as the bleached-silver boy demanded her attention—"_Wait a minute._"—and she stopped moving. So did the Sora guy. Reї waited for bleached-silver boy to say something memorable, something like _It's over_ or _Have fun with him, he didn't satisfy me anyway_, or something along the dramatic, suggestive lines of that, something to sever one corner of the love triangle, something that would remind her of their eighth grade mishap and at the same time wouldn't let her forget their _current_ mishap.

Reї almost dropped his rag when he heard the bleached-silver kid say:

"Kairi... Thanks."

That was it? Nothing juicy?

"Riku..."

"Are you guys okay?" The brunet's precariously light tone was closer than before. Had it really taken him this long to notice the tension? Jesus-Krispies.

"We're fine." Bleached-silver boy, terse.

"Where should we go next?" The girl, trying create a diversion.

"Are you _sure_ you're fine?" Puny brunet boy, very anxious now.

"We're _fine_, Sora." Bleached-silver boy again.

"Let's go look at the music place. We can listen to CDs with those big headphones." The girl, a more desperate attempt.

"Oh...yeah! Let's do it." The scrawny guy named Sora sounded like an airhead. That, or he was distracted rather easily. They left as he was asking, "Hey, Riku, do you listen to Yellowcard?"

Well, if that hadn't been incredibly confusing. Entertaining, but definitely confusing. Leave it to a bunch of little troublemakers and their bisexual love triangle to reduce him from a professional to a snooping a-hole.

"You're lucky I was here today," Koko said from behind him, and he nearly jumped in guilt. Her high-pitched voice had a way of really sounding frightening at times.

"Not really."

"It's alright," she murmured, pushing a lock of black hair out of her face, tightening her ponytail. "I won't tell anyone you were more interested in other people's business than ours." Koko gave him another one of her narrow, decisive glances as she disappeared behind the counter and into the back room again, tiny in stature but very large in poise. She was only seventeen and she was already a more valued employee than he was—and Reї was twenty-three, for heaven's sake.

God, he hated high-schoolers. He always had, always did, always would.

* * *

"I'm gonna be fifteen on Sunday."

Riku blinked, brows rising. He turned away from the microwave, staring at Sora where he sat on the counter, legs hooked at the ankles. "...You're kidding me," he said. The microwave beeped five times to punctuate.

Sora grinned sheepishly, hunching into himself with good-humored shame. "No," he murmured. "I'm not."

"Why haven't you told me until now?" Riku cried, pulling open the microwave with a creased brow and a little frown. "That's less than a week away."

"Hey, it's not a big deal... And I don't even know when _your_ birthday is."

"February 12th."

"I'll remember that."

"Hey, it's not a big deal." Riku smirked as Sora scoffed lightly at his copied response, peeling off the plastic wrapper that covered the bowl of instant mashed potatoes. "Sora, hand me that spoon, please."

Sora did so, bridging the gap between the two with a tablespoon. "Riku, will you spend the night Saturday?"

He paused as he grasped the handle of the spoon, staring at it for a moment before gaining enough courage to continue up to meet Sora's. The boy's lashes framed blue eyes almost impossible to read, but Riku tried. He tossed hair out of his gaze with a gentle flick of the head and tried, frowning thinly. There were numerous sentiments aimed at him: innocence, indulgence, and warmth, all coy and sweet enough, but with shadows of mischief and stealth lingering near the pupil—the perfect look of a good kid who'd discovered the tempting pleasures of being a bad boy and was testing the boundaries of such newfound delights.

And Riku thought that was a flawless analogy. In fact, it was probably a definition.

"Yeah..." he agreed, and he was still holding one end of the tablespoon while Sora clutched the other. He leaned in, redirecting his gaze just before their lips met for the umpteenth time in a week, soft and warm and agonizing to pull away from; Sora's mouth remained on his even as he began to lean back, and after a moment (and another inch), they separated with a delicate, nearly inaudible _smack-_ing sound, and Riku really took the spoon from him. He shoved it into the bowl of potatoes and began to stir.

_I can't even tell if he's got something in mind. And if he does...what the hell is it? _

"Um...Riku?"

Riku stopped, staring at the potatoes, wondering if he'd done something wrong—was there something he'd forgotten about? He looked around quickly, brows rising again. Macaroni and cheese...? Check. It was sitting on the stove at low heat. Potatoes...? Check. He was stirring those right now. Unloved green beans...? Check. Already warmed up and in a pot beside the mac-n-cheese. Tyson chicken strips...? Check. In the oven to keep warm, but check.

"Ah...what?" Riku glanced over his shoulder at the brunet, thoroughly confused.

"Saturday night..."

_He's not gonna just..._tell_ me his plans. ...Is he?_

"Yeah?"

"Kairi is staying over, too."

_...I guess he doesn't have anything planned, then. _

Riku shrugged, sweeping through the kitchen to put the bowl of instant potatoes on the counter beside the stove.

"Are you mad?" Sora's brows knotted, his mouth pulled into a distraught frown. "You're mad, aren't you? Riku, I'm sorry... It's not that I don't trust you to spend the night by yourself—I mean, my mother might not, but that doesn't matter—it's just that it's _tradition_ for Kairi to spend the night for my birthday. She always does, and we stay up until really early in the morning and we sleep in the living room and I just want the both of you to be there because it means a lot to me... And, hey, I know you this year, which means even more to me, so please don't be mad. You can spend the night by yourself another night, I promise, I swear, I want you to. I really do."

Riku stood with his arms crossed, leaning back against the counter and peering at Sora from behind his hair. He stayed like that even after Sora broke off into a sharp inhalation, having run out of breath during his rushed lamentation, and he was feeling really lost in the very essence of Sora again but he managed to draw himself back to reality and grin at just how much he loved him when he was flustered; he said, "Sora, the three of us hung out _all day _today. And I had _fun_. So why would I be mad if she stayed the night, too?"

"I—"

"It's _your_ _birthday_, first of all. It's _Kairi_, second of all. And, third of all, I'm not _mad_ in the least. She's really cool. ...It'll be a birthday you never forget."

Sora's jaw hung gently slack and he gripped the edge of the counter, having craned forward during his passionate speech. "...Really?" he inquired after a moment, somewhat surprised. The last he'd known, there had been quite a bit of tension between Riku and Kairi.

_If things go as _I've_ just planned them, then _Hell, yes, really_. _"Yeah, really." Riku pushed off the counter and turned to the oven, switching all the settings to Off and grabbing a dishcloth, pulling the pan of chicken strips out to set on the stovetop. "You act like I hate the entire female species, Sora."

"Well...I...I dunno, I just thought that you and Kairi had a little bit of bad feelings or something."

"Nope. She's cool. _We're_ cool."

"I'm glad. Really glad." Sora slid off the counter and padded around to the stove, pointing to the cabinet where the plates were. Riku pulled them out, handing one to the boy beside him.

"You have to eat some of those, by the way."

"They'll kill me, Riku."

"You're the biggest baby I've ever met in my life."

"Green things will kill you."

"I haven't keeled over yet."

"That's just weird."

Riku snorted, following Sora to the table with his dish in hand; Sora bopped along, setting his plate down and going to fetch a Coke for himself, a glass of water for Riku. Riku watched him from the table, from below his lashes with his arms crossed and a remote smile tilting the corner of his mouth up. It was moments like these that Roxas totally slipped his mind, that he completely forgot there was something veiled and secluded behind those dark blue eyes; he just momentarily detached himself from everything and watched the intriguing kid, silently observing from behind the hair in his eyes as he moved, his shirt sliding along his lean frame and his pants never slipping too far off his hips because of his navy-blue belt, the klutzy but charming motions of his hands and arms and neck, and the hypnotizing look of his face, of his eyes— His presence, his poise, was one thing, but his visage was definitely another. It was perfection after perfection to Riku, and it was in moments like these that it felt just like it was _before_ he'd found everything out.

"I put lots of ice in it, like you like it," Sora said, oblivious to Riku's fixation. Riku nodded slightly, pulling the glass closer to his plate.

"Thanks."

"No problem... Hey, you don't want ketchup, do you?"

"Ew."

"_Ew_ to your nasty green beans, Riku."

"_Ew_ to your face."

The front part of the little townhome filled with sudden laughter, juvenile and affectionate all at once. And after the mirth died away and he'd opened up his Coke with a sharp _crack_ and a hiss of carbonation, Sora slid out of his seat and around to the other side of the table, plopping down on the edge of the second chair there and leaning to rest his forehead on Riku's shoulder.

"Are you okay?" Riku mumbled immediately, forgetting his forkful and turning slightly, peering down at the brunet head that had attached itself to his upper arm—because it was moments like _those_ that he forgot, and moments like _these_ that he remembered again.

"I'm perfectly fine." His voice was weakly muffled.

"Then why aren't you eating?"

Sora shot up and off Riku's shoulder, reaching across the table and dragging his food over to where he sat now, cutting a glance at the boy beside him from below his lashes. "I am," he insisted.

With him so close, Riku could pick up on his scent, sweet and fresh and irrefutably his. He jabbed at some of the macaroni and cheese (the dinner he'd made hadn't been extravagant, just what he could pull out of the pantry and fridge, as always, but he'd managed to make it look like it'd taken more than the twenty minutes it had), staring at his dish and at a total loss for words. Beside him, Sora was busy trying to keep the four or five treacherously green green beans the older boy had slapped onto his plate from touching the rest of his food.

"They're _not going to kill you_."

"That's what you _think_, Riku."

"You're ridiculous."

"I am."

He gave him a grin, and Riku melted. On the inside, of course. On the outside he was still as calm and cool as ever, insouciance and complacency written carefully across his face. The grin was closer now, and he could really smell him, clean skin and AXE body-spray, and behind shocks of tawny hair, blue eyes fluttered closed as their mouths met once again. It was a hard kiss, Sora craning forward—and nearly off the side of his chair, bracing himself with one hand on the edge of Riku's and the other on the edge of the table—while the older boy stayed right where he was. And after a moment of that, Riku began to lean forward, deepening the kiss with one arm slung over the back of the chair and the other limp in his lap. Sora's mouth shifted and he parted his lips, and the kiss became supple once more, soft and warm and wet. Riku tasted as good as ever, not like the food he'd made because he hadn't even eaten a bite yet, but delightfully sweet and a tiny bit like metal. Dinner was forgotten and his tinier frame began to sway gently as he moved in harmony with their chins, scooting closer and now gripping the arc of Riku's chair back, his knees bumping into the older boy's and his concentration honed.

The sound of a key sliding into the front door's lock was missed, but the racket of an attempt to get the faulty doorknob to turn couldn't have gone unnoticed.

Sora broke away with a sharp breath, eyes wide and cheeks flushed. Riku blinked a few times, as if wondering how he'd leaned so far away from his original position. Big, blue eyes skittered around to the clock on the living room wall, and as the doorknob finally gave up its stubborn battle, Sora breathed, "My mom's home."

"No shit," Riku murmured in return, and Sora sent him a warning glance.

Riku had never really seen Mrs. Kaimana before, and as she came stomping into the house laden with grocery bags, he really didn't believe she was old enough to have a fourteen-year-old—until he caught a glimpse of her dark blue eyes, the long lashes that framed them, and the cherubic shape of her face, and immediately felt that it had to be impossible for things like those to be inherited so precisely. But, after he'd recovered from the shock of seeing such familiar (and treasured) features on someone else, he definitely believed the relation to be true.

She stumbled in and set the groceries down just off the linoleum entryway, the door hanging open behind her, and as she straightened up with her hands on her back as though it were a strain to merely bend down, she cried softly, "No, Sora, it's alright—I can get all the bags myself."

Sora sat right where he was, as though her sarcasm had not processed yet. (It had.)

"Sugar, didn't you see me in the parking lot?" The woman sighed heavily, kicking the door shut and taking off her shoes, somehow both at the same time. "I could have used some help, baby—"

That was when Mrs. Kaimana's cobalt eyes fell on her son's dinner guest, and she stopped everything with one black loafer in her grasp, the other hand on the doorknob to keep her balance. And the first thing that she really thought about was the possibility of her son becoming somebody else in the few hours they'd been apart.

"Sugar...?"

"Mom, this is Riku. Riku, this is my mom."

"_Riku_?" she said, and while it was a breathless laugh that was a blatant cover-up for the _Are you kidding me? _that echoed in its last vibrations, it was also a laugh of relief because it was, indeed, still her son. "Well, it's nice to meet you." She dropped her shoes beside the pairs of Converse perched neatly on the edge of the tile and, with her brows risen and her eyes keen with critical incredulity, she tossed hair over her shoulder and began to strip of her coat and scarf.

"Nice to meet you, too, ma'am."

"Oh, don't bother. My name is Yuuko."

"Okay." Riku exchanged a glance with Sora, and Sora shrugged roughly in response, a petulant frown on his face and his eyes reading confusion.

"So..." Mrs. Kaimana hung her coat over the arm of the chair nearest the doorway, the black easy-chair situated below the picture of her son on the beach years prior, and then propped her hands on her hips. "...What are we all doing, hnm? I don't remember approving of anyone coming over."

"_Mom_," Sora hissed, brows furrowing further in perplexity. "You've never told me I needed..._approval_." He dragged the word out as if it were disgusting just to say it.

"You know what? You're right. So, what is it we're doing, hunh? Dinner? What in the world did you make?"

"Food," Riku grunted, and received nearly exact stares of censure from mother and son. He shifted uncomfortably in the chair, looking away quickly. _Damn_.

"Riku made it, Ma."

"Oh, really! That's so nice of you, Riku. Thank you _so much_."

"It's really good, Mom. You want some?"

_Sora, you idiot, we haven't even eaten it yet. _

"No, sugar. I'm fine. Actually, I picked up some dinner for us on the way home, because I had no idea you had a friend over to _make_ you dinner."

"...Sorry."

There was hurt pride spun obviously upon the subsequent silence. Riku shifted again, tapping the edge of the table nervously. There was something else that had also settled precariously over the room, but he didn't quite know what it was. All he knew was that that _something_ made him feel very much like an intruder. And if he knew that, as well as what was best for him, he felt that he should probably vacate the Kaimana premises. Pronto. Again.

He stood, tossing hair from his eyes and pushing his chair in, politely. The jangle of his wallet chain (he'd worn it because they'd gone downtown today, and he had bad luck with remembering where he placed his wallet) was the only sound in the house as he strode through the living room and into the hall, feeling both Sora and Mrs. Kaimana watching him with intense curiosity. And when he emerged from the hallway again with his coat in hand, having left it in Sora's room when they'd gotten back an hour ago, Riku felt very, _very_ under the microscope. Very _guilty_. He stepped into his shoes with his head hung, and he didn't look up the entire time he laced them up, because he knew that if he did, he'd have to meet either Sora's gaze or Sora's mother's gaze, and he wasn't sure which one would be better to grace at this point.

"I'll see you later, Sora," he said, chancing a quick connection with both of them; he gave Sora a faint smile, gave his mother a tiny "Thank you" as she stepped aside and he slipped out into the lobby, and while she stood with her arms crossed, feeling extremely overwhelmed at this point, she was entirely surprised when her son zipped away from the table and followed the other boy out.

"Riku, wait—"

"Don't sweat it."

Sora yanked the door shut behind him and gripped the handle, leaning back against the threshold and frowning tightly—and for this moment only, he didn't worry about the snooping floor manager. Riku rose his brows at him as he fastened up his jacket.

"I don't know why she's acting like that. Seriously. I'm sorry, Riku—really, really sorry. It's nothing against you _at all_."

"It's okay. It's understandable. ...Ah, call me later, alright?"

Sora stared at him then, longing and wistful and eager, and Riku had a feeling—nah, he knew again, just had the plain and simple knowledge, that Sora wanted to kiss him good-bye. Badly. Riku shook his head in negation, grinning lightly. "Call me," he said again, and Sora nodded with an expression like that of a dejected puppy.

The look dissipated, though, after he watched Riku exit Fallridge's North Wing lobby, watched the glass door drift shut behind him, and with a new expression on his face, Sora swung back into his house; and when the door clicked fully shut, he settled this fresh glower on his mother. She was unloading groceries, a sharp frown creasing her brow.

"Thanks a lot, Mom," he spat.

"Don't even start with me, Sora."

"Did you have a bad day at work or something?"

"Actually, no."

"Then why did you act that way in front of Riku? You know how embarrassing that was?"

"I just didn't expect him to be over. That's all."

"He cooked me dinner." Sora paused, shoulders drawn up and his voice shrill with indignation. "He _always_ cooks me dinner."

"I'm happy to hear it!" Yuuko cried, shutting a cabinet loudly and turning partially to lock eyes with her son. Sora crossed his arms, just as affronted as she was, and neither of them was aware of the separate reasons behind their conflict, only the ones they assumed.

Yuuko's lips thinned. "I just figured, you know, you'd enlighten me on your decision before you started accepting charity."

Sora's jaw dropped. His mother's dropped in turn, as though she really hadn't expected those exact words to come tumbling from her mouth.

"Mom..." the boy breathed, brows knotting further. "It's not..._charity_. He's my... He's my _friend_."

"Well, from now on, you'd better tell me when you've got a _free dinner_ being made for you, so I don't go and buy something unknowingly."

"I can't _believe_ you!"

"I can't believe _you_!"

"Why?"

"You've never told me about this kid. Ever. I mean, I've answered a phone call or two, but you've never told me about him."

"Why should I have to?"

"Because I'd just _maybe _like to know. I'm your mother after all—"

"Fine, _Mom_—" Sora threw his hands into the air, teeth gritted. He'd had enough of the...the _childish_ way his mom was acting. Childish and rude. Mothers just weren't supposed to act like that in front of boyfriends. ...Er, 'friends'. "—fine, you'd like to know? Well, he's coming over on Saturday night, too. Riku and Kairi are spending the night and you can't say 'no' to that because they're my friends and it's my birthday. _God_, I'm finally happy with a guy and you're trying to _ruin_ it!"

His voice was fragile upon that last sentence, wavering thinly and ready to break at any moment, and without giving his mother a chance to answer, he spun on his heel and disappeared down the hall. The outburst was punctuated by the slam of his door and the flip of the lock, and after that the house was silent enough for the ticking of the clock to be too loud.

Yuuko Kaimana suddenly had what some people might call a 'flashback', standing alone in the kitchen with stuffed Fred Meyer bags sitting at her feet and empty ones crumpled in her fists—abruptly she was sent back a few years, nine, possibly even ten, and the house was still in semi-disarray because they were still semi- in the process of moving in, and Sora was five, six at the most, angry because she wouldn't let him go downtown with his dad, and he stood right there at the mouth of the hallway and pointed and yelled and cried big, hot crocodile tears, before spinning and running off to seek consolation in his bedroom.

She fiddled with the empty grocery bag, blinking a few times and letting out long breaths.

So, _that_ was Riku.

Well, he _seemed_ nice enough.

He looked like someone _she_ would have seen as untouchably cool or something else like that, if _she_ had been in high school with him years ago. Looked like someone her old friend Aimi would have dubbed 'badass' while fiddling with her oversized earrings and unwrapping a lollipop.

So..._that_ was the Riku she'd heard of from Dr. Ling. _That_ was who had kept Roxas from complying with hypnosis.

No one had told her that _Sora_ was so attached to this kid, too.

And she knew nothing about him. Nothing at _all_.

Yuuko leaned back against the counter and closed her eyes, taking a slow breath through her nose. Sora had turned on his CD player, blasting his favorite song again. And, again, she'd probably get a phone call from the floor manager—or maybe even a personal visit this time—to warn her that she needed to keep the noise down or she'd be fined.

It had been a while since Sora had been so mad at her, mad enough to throw a moderate fit like that.

And, well, it looked as though Riku was going to spend the night on Saturday, too. She couldn't change Sora's mind about that.

She wouldn't want to, really.

At least Kairi would be there. She didn't have to worry about a thing if Kairi was going to be there.

* * *

Thanksgiving was meager.

Monday night, a promised phone call was indeed made and apologies were given and accepted, and the two days between then and the holiday were idle.

Kairi Nobuyuki spent the space between Monday and Thursday at her father's, drifting around his apartment with a cup of coffee leftover from the morning brew and the TV high up on the wall set to the morning soaps, until her dad got off work for lunch and they went out to eat at one of the many quaint places hidden downtown; after lunch she was alone again, and walked along the pretty gray beach with her cell phone out. But she talked to no one, and instead just let the waves tickle her toes.

Riku Hayate spent the same stretch of time dawdling around his own house, cleaning here and there as he did when he was bored (it was a bad habit that had grown over the years, and lately had exploded into something compulsive), sometimes picking up one of the books his mother had already read and dusting through a few chapters, sometimes picking up the book he'd been assigned for that English paper due after break, and every now and then he'd sit down on the couch with an equal amount of distance between he and both parents, and they watched sitcoms and dramas in a comfortable silence. Tuesday afternoon Sora called and they talked for almost two hours, and Wednesday around one-thirty, Tidus came over on his bike in search of reconciliation.

But Sora Kaimana had to be the one out of the three who felt the full brunt of the listless days. By Monday night, he'd crept out of his room (mostly because he was hungry and he'd eaten too much candy in the three hours he'd been holed up in there, at first listening to CDs, then the radio, then reading books) and sought out his mother for forgiveness and conference; she acquiesced and they both decided they'd been acting out of line, and by the time he'd given her a kiss on the cheek, grabbed the phone, and retreated to his room again, Yuuko Kaimana felt as though she had lied—that she hadn't really understood why Sora had been so angry, but she'd told him she did anyway. Nevertheless, he forgave her, and called Riku to discuss his thoughts on the day. Tuesday brought only a slight onset of edginess, the drag of the day somewhat awkward (there was no appointment with Dr. Ling this week due to the holiday), and Sora pushed through it with the aid of TV, VCR, the phone, and some candy. He woke up late and went to bed late, called Riku once and felt that he'd called him too much; Wednesday brought nothing better, except he helped cook a dish or two for the next day's dinner... And as they did this, despite their laughter and the comfort of being around his mother, Sora couldn't help but feel kind of lonely. It was just the two of them again, just the two of them in the townhouse that felt so, so empty but was actually so, so small.

And, on Thursday...Thanksgiving was meager.

In an apartment along the beach, the spread was magnificently done-up and the conversation was enjoyable, but the rest of the night was dim and lonesome.

In a shabby white house on a cul-de-sac just a ten-minute's walk from the Laundromat, there was no turkey but instead a rotisserie chicken that had been bought already-cooked, and the rest of the food was only partially instant; the dinner eaten with three seated at the cramped table in the nook of the kitchen was, in itself, something to be thankful for.

And in the Fallridge Housing Complex, North Wing, First Floor, Apt #102, dinner had been slaved over for a total of five hours and forty minutes, and although there were only two people eating it, there was enough for the next three nights, as well; there was holiday cheer that masked a melancholy mirrored between mother and son, and by eight o'clock, there was really no more conversation.

It's safe to say that everyone looked forward to the following Saturday in one way or another.

* * *

**A/N: Okay, seriously, I just cranked the last of this out. **

**And, yeah, I'm kind of a big Yellowcard fan. 83 **

**The phrase "Jesus-Krispies" is totally © Stephen King. I just can't help using it sometimes. -snicker.-**

**I know this is... -counts on fingers.- ...what, three days late? But, I swear, there is an unyielding explanation for this. Besides the fact that (hey, this is nothing new) I've been incredibly busy—finals, finals, finals, and a general lack of this amazing thing called **_**time**_**—I have decided that I'm going to alter the update schedule for this. **

**Instead of every Monday night, I'm going to update this fic **_**every other Friday night**_**. I know that seems like a long time between chapters, but hey, life keeps us busy.**

**So—new schedule for updating is every other Friday. Thanks a lot for being patient, you guys, and I hope this chapter doesn't disappoint anyone...y'know, being all sloppy or something. xP **

**Happy holidays. **


	13. The Swing of Your Hips

_**Candy Boy**_

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the amazing franchise © Disney and Square Enix; everything else © their rightful owners.**

**Ratings/Warnings: MATURE—profanity, explicit content (sexual scenes), graphic themes, AU**

**A/N: Okay. This is a long time coming, I know that. And yeah, see the alarmingly tiny scroll bar to your right? It's lying. This chapter contains a lot of dialogue later on which is confusing the scroll. Sorry about that shock. Enjoy anyway, hahah. xP**

* * *

_Chapter Thirteen_

* * *

He didn't really know why he said it. It was kind of like those moments when_ I love you _marqueed through the back of his mind, blinking patiently as it tried to find the path away from his subconscious and out of his mouth. It was _kind_ of like that, but not exactly. It was only similar because he didn't know why it happened.

Riku knocked on the doorframe of his parents' bedroom and when his dad appeared in the half-open threshold, he opened his mouth and announced, "I'm staying over at Tidus's tonight."

Except... He _wasn't_.

It just came out so smoothly...after he'd managed to start speaking. That had taken him a second or two because he'd been _prepared_ to say "I'm staying over at Sora's tonight", but at the last instant had reverted to childhood's natural instinct to save one's own skin, and he pulled the quickest excuse he could find out of thin air. It wasn't that he really _cared_ what his dad thought about his social life, but... There was a huge—and slightly intimidating—difference between staying at Sora's house and staying at Tidus's, which was comprised of a number of smaller but definitely significant ones.

For one, Riku had been friends with Tidus for two years now, and his father knew the kid very well. He also knew that Tidus was a soccer player, and relatively well-known throughout the school system at that. ...Never mind the reasons _why_, but it was still a point.

For two, Sora was a new friend, a friend that his dad had already judged as "off" somehow: he'd never heard of the kid before, he was puny and he was girly (Ichiro Hayate only thought this because he knew the Kaimanas had never been on any school sports teams), and the first and last time they'd met each other had been essential disaster.

For three, Riku had spent the night at Tidus's before. Five or six times in the last sixteen months.

And for four, despite Ichiro's blatant oblivion as far as what his son felt, what his son thought, and what his son wanted, he _was_ aware of his son's tendency to hate being around people he wasn't familiar with. And if he was familiar enough with Sora to want to spend the night at his house (a rare feat for his son, really), that meant he was _very_ familiar with him, and _that_ would make Ichiro Hayate very, very agitated.

But Riku said _Tidus_, not _Sora_, so Ichiro Hayate scratched at the side of his neck, tipped his head to one side, and blinked a few times down at his son. The boy could tell he wasn't fully awake yet; it was, after all, a Saturday afternoon and the man's day off to boot, so he didn't blame him.

"Yuh, of course," his dad finally husked, leaning against the door. "What time are you leaving?"

"Now." Riku shifted his weight to the other foot.

"What time are you gonna be back?"

"Tomorrow morning. Before you go in to work._" Because I know you don't trust me to come home then unless you see me in the house, you control freak. _

"Be good. I don't want any calls at midnight."

Riku blinked, all his grudging thoughts dissipating as his brows furrowed and it took him a moment of searching his dad's face to understand why he'd said that; it took another moment for the statement to register as the joke it had been intended as. Then he figured that if he were in a movie, his ears would have been burning a typical red right on cue there. He regarded his father from below his lashes, mouth twisted into a thin line. He knew exactly why he'd flung that supposed-to-be jest out there, teasing or not. He remembered that night, definitely—it had been just a simple curfew violation in June, at the tracks with various flavors of slushies and nothing illegal. They hadn't really even been doing anything at all_;_ they were just tossing rocks and talking about everything in general, but they'd still met the police outside of school functions and they'd still been escorted to their houses and they'd still gotten warnings to obey the ten o'clock establishment.

Needless to say, it hadn't been too big of a deal, and his dad had been in a very good mood despite the midnight phone call. He actually laughed rather heartily when Riku had been escorted back to the house (there was no car to pick the boy up in, after all), and after the officer had driven off, he'd sniffed his son's breath, told him to walk a straight line, laughed very hard again, then told him with a huge grin on his face to go to sleep or else. And despite the positive ending to that night, it had given his friends—his _old_ friends—a precarious reputation that called for snorts of "be good or else" but no real restrictions. Was that funny, or what?

Riku grunted. "Don't worry, Dad," he grumbled, absently combing a few fingers through his hair. The shorter layers tumbled down about his temple again, slightly tousled but still perfectly in his eyes. "There won't be." _Unless me and Sora decide to go for a walk, but I don't think that will happen. _

His dad nodded curtly and closed the door, looking contented to be left once again to himself, and Riku trudged down the hallway towards the living room—but paused in the bathroom to examine his reflection before he took off. Had to make sure he looked nice even though he'd probably have to go through the same routine after riding the bus, anyway—he smoothed his hair down where it was still a little ruffled from his fingers, ran them through once more just to give it that naturally pieced-up look, fixed the collar of the black work-shirt he'd thrown on over a gray TCHS soccer tee (what to wear above his belt-loops had taken him about twenty minutes to decide because he wasn't sure if he should just wear a T-shirt or look suitably _done-up _for such a special occasion as a birthday) ensured his wristbands were on evenly, situated his jeans on his hips so that they had the perfect sag at just appropriately loose but not too baggy, considered then if he should dig around for a belt but opted against it, fixed the hems of his jeans so that his shoelaces were hidden beneath them because if they weren't, it drove him crazy, gave himself one last spritz of TAG and then officially approved himself Ready-For-a-Significant-Other's-Birthday, hit the lights and swung out into the hall again.

He shuffled through the living room tugging his jacket on and trying to situate it on his shoulders so it didn't mess up his carefully affixed _layered_ look, and before he left, he gave his mother a kiss on the cheek. She blinked as she creased the page in another new dime novel, a little startled by such an act of affection from her son. In all actuality, he looked positively radiant as he waved and headed out the front door, and only after he'd disappeared and she saw him through the threshold window (a little blurry; it needed to be washed sometime...maybe she'd do it herself while he was gone) trundling out of the cul-de-sac with his hands in his pockets, only then did Mrs. Hayate realize she'd been wanting to tell him she loved him very much. But now as she turned her eyes back to her book, she felt a twinge of jealousy that something outside of the home could make him so happy.

It was cold outside, a damp cold that got bitter down in the bones. It felt as though it should snow, but Riku knew better than that; it was the rainy season, not the snowy season, so only if the temperatures dipped in the night would the rain forecast later on turn into snowflakes. Yeah, it was on days like these that he couldn't wait to get his own license, and then get a job, and then get a car of his own. A_ working_ car.

Turning left and by now able to hear the real sounds of the city's motion instead of the muted echoes from his secluded little cul-de-sac, he wondered how Sora's birthday party was going to go down. He hoped that it wasn't going to be a big _present _thing. He hadn't bought him a present, but he'd definitely been thinking about it all week. Of course, he felt bad he hadn't spent money, but...he really didn't have money to spend.

God, he hoped they didn't go out somewhere. Or go out to eat or something. Riku did _not _want anyone to have to pay for him. That would be completely degrading, more so than not having something cutesy to give his boyfriend of three-or-so weeks for his birthday.

Not that he wanted to be _cutesy_, but it _did_ seem kind of shallow to show up penniless and giftless. Sora should understand either way; he was a deep kid.

He knew what _he_ wanted to do for his birthday, on the other hand. He wanted to invite Wakka and Tidus, tell them to bring Lulu and Yuna, maybe Zack if things kept going the way they were going with the old crew, and Sora and Kairi, definitely. They'd all go out to eat at that pizza place by the mall, or the Chinese buffet a little farther down, and then they'd hang out all night and if everyone wanted to stay over, they could. They'd go home late so his dad would already be in bed, and they'd crash in his living room or they'd squeeze into his bedroom, and Riku would tell Sora not to fall asleep and when everyone else had dropped off into dreamland, the two of them would sneak out into the kitchen, or the living room, or even outside onto the stoop, and they'd be all alone together and finish his birthday all alone together.

...And since _when_ did he have such romantic fantasies?

Besides, he'd be lucky if Tidus and Wakka even wanted to come, or if Zack hadn't turned on him by then, too. And hell, what if Sora wasn't even Sora on his birthday? What_ then_?

Riku swallowed on a throat that was suddenly tight and raw. Geez, romantic fantasies were stupid. They were _all kinds_ of stupid. Every _level_ of stupid.

The bus stop was on the corner where the Laundromat stood, empty and half-lit in the Saturday pre-evening. Riku stood beneath the roof of it and leaned against the city map, keeping his hands in his pockets as his eyes traveled the bus's routes and times sign. The next bus arrived at four thirty-five; he had about a ten minute wait, the Walgreens across the street told him as the time, the date, the temperature, and their daily deals flashed in red on a digital marquee board.

He couldn't help feeling a little anger, deep down in that pocket of self-respecting pride, that he couldn't openly say he was staying the night at Sora's. It was just Sora, for Christ's sake, and it wasn't like if he admitted that, he'd have to confess _everything _Sora was to him.

...But Riku also felt pretty _bad_.

_Bad_ in that thrilling way, that lofty teenager way, that _Hey, I'm not really spending the night at my friend's house, I'm spending the night at my _boy_friend's house_ kind of way. And he thought that _bad _was much better to feel than ashamed.

The only bump he'd need to work out of his plan was what to do if his dad, for some reason totally beyond him, called Tidus's house to make sure he was there.

Ah, whatever.

He'd figure it out.

He had an _idea_, dammit.

* * *

It started raining when Riku got off at the bus stop outside the Fallridge gates. He had been torn between two distractions from his admittedly anxious thoughts during the whole fifteen minutes of public transit (the trip had seemed close to _forever, _far too long for the short distance it was traveling, but that was how the city bus always was), and one of them had been the dark, rolling clouds. They muted the brilliance of the world, making it somehow dimmer, paler, and Riku wished it would never start raining because that half-saturated hue to the world always appealed to him. The other distraction had been a kid with outrageously messy hair dyed every color of the rainbow sitting near the doors in the back, and as Riku hopped off the last step and landed on the concrete of sidewalk, pulling his collar up and off his shoulders to form a makeshift umbrella out of his jacket, the bus pulled away and he caught a glimpse of blurred rainbow through one of the windows.

He ran all the way from the bus stop to avoid the brunt of the rain but was still pretty damp by the time he found himself standing in the townhome lobby outside Apartment 104, disheveled and slightly out of breath and dripping a bit on the carpet. That was how he re-met Mrs. Kaimana. It wasn't a second meeting, because the first time she hadn't been herself—Riku could tell just by how she answered the door and welcomed him in that she and her son had had a _long_ talk about Monday night. This afternoon had somehow become their _actual_ first acquaintance, understood by both parties without having to be officially disclosed, and Riku decided that was a good thing.

She opened the door on his wet-cat stare and at first gasped, then giggled in a fashion almost _too _motherly for the youthfulness she portrayed, and then she opened the front door wider and beckoned, "Come on in and get dry. I guess it's started to rain hard, hunh?"

"Ah, yeah. Thanks," he mumbled, and managed a coy smile in return. It wasn't that he didn't want to look grateful; it was more or less that, despite her obvious change of mood, he was still slightly intimidated by her, because of Monday but also just because she was Sora's mother. And impressions meant _everything_ under circumstances such as theirs, right?

He entered the house stomping his feet on the welcome mat and noticed before he looked around the living room that Kairi was there already. He'd guessed as much; the pink imitation Converse on the entryway linoleum confirmed it. Imitation, really?

_No. Be cool, Riku. Be _nice_. _

Riku lifted his head as he took off his jacket to find Sora and Kairi seated pleasantly on the couch, their legs tucked into the blanket that had previously been thrown over the sofa's back, looking rather like twins. In fact, their perfect closeness in the blanket with their heels on the coffee table alarmed Riku a bit—ruffled his feathers a bit—but he draped his jacket on the back of a chair and shook the feeling off as he shook his fingers through his hair, trying to fix it before it dried funky. Damn, it had looked so _good_, too.

Sora was the first to speak after that, sounding as though it were a great effort to remain calm. "Hey, Riku."

"Hey."

Kairi stayed silent, tucked into the couch and smiling in a way that was inexplicable, but definitely understood: something like dejection.

"Why don't you go get comfortable?" Mrs. Kaimana patted his shoulder, and at the touch he looked around to meet her eyes; in them, he received all the apology necessary for the misconceptions that had occurred last time they'd seen each other, and her warm smile topped it all off. He was welcome there. He knew that for sure now. He nodded, and despite knowing that, he still felt a little lost. Normally he was alone at Sora's house with Sora. But now there were two other people to worry about. Two _important_ people to worry about.

God, he was _not_ very good with new people.

"Sure," he replied, and tried to straighten his T-shirt and the work-shirt over it as he strutted across the living room to drop down beside Sora, caging the brunet in between his two friends. "Hey, Kairi," Riku then said, propping his heels up on the table in turn, and he leaned forward to give her the obligatory smile. He found it wasn't as difficult as he'd imagined at first.

She smiled in return, big and bright and full of obvious relief. "Hey, Riku."

Sora began to tuck his legs into the blanket as well; "Aww, Riku, you're still kind of wet!" dusting against his ear made him shiver in more ways than one.

The television was on and commercials were flashing. The house was warm, sweet-smelling, cozy; there was no cake, no presents or gift bags or cards that he could see, but Sora's mother was in the kitchen and there was a pot of what smelled like spaghetti sauce on the stove and she was fixing something in three little mugs, and Riku thought that this was not at all what he'd expected. It was an entirely unconventional way to celebrate a birthday, but...combined with the unconventionality of Sora, Mrs. Kaimana, and Kairi, it somehow fit.

He also couldn't help but wonder in that hypercritical and sometimes nosy way of his (the same way in which, so many weeks ago, he'd noticed the male figure in this family was quite clearly missing), if the unconventionality was there because there was no money for extravagance if there wasn't even enough for Sora to eat well-rounded meals.

Riku stuck with the family-tradition theory. It fit much, much better, just like how he somehow fit perfectly with them on the couch with his legs tucked into the blanket and his shoulder against Sora's, welcomed into the familial atmosphere with not a single rebuff.

It was like the epitome of a sleepover, except it actually appealed to him. And he found that he'd never had so much fun before. Never _laughed_ so hard before, and that was the best part—hunched over and laughing hysterically with Sora clutching onto him and laughing just as hard.

He felt comfortable with them.

He felt..._in place_.

And snug as a bug in the blanket with Kairi and Sora, who flipped through the channels in search of a good movie, Riku felt every tempting brush of the boy next to him, every nudge against his side, just teasing him with the vague presence of the other boy's body. He wished he could put his arm around him somehow, or hold his hand, be in contact with him without anyone knowing at all, but he didn't quite know how to do so inconspicuously. So he kept himself content with those subtle little touches, and agreed with Kairi that _Jurassic Park_ was a good movie and they probably wouldn't find anything else, anyway.

Mrs. Kaimana made everyone (even herself) individual mugs of hot chocolate and actually joined them on the couch for the rest of the movie, and Riku couldn't help but snicker because she gasped at everything and anything...and most of the time the things she gasped at weren't even dinosaurs.

* * *

The movie ended at seven and they ate dinner; it was the spaghetti dinner Sora adored so much, and Riku stated that he was in shock that Sora could ever say his meager pantry-sauce was as good as his mother's. This drew a flustered reassurance from the boy and a hearty, flattered laugh from his mom. But what was really the shocker to him was that Kairi and Sora had room for seconds; he could barely finish his first round.

As they loaded up their dishes, Mrs. Kaimana brought them more blankets before she retreated to her bathroom for a shower; they moved the coffee table across the room and rolled the blankets into a makeshift mattress between the television and the sofa, muttering and snickering and picking throw pillows to sleep on. Sora asked Riku to hit the lights and he did; the living room was lit up by the TV only, and, seeing Sora seated rather like a prince amongst the pillows and blankets with shadows dancing on his face as he directed Kairi to pick a different pillow if that one was going to annoy her like she claimed it would, Riku felt that even if Sora had wanted his birthday to be celebrated a different way, he preferred this a whole hell lot more. There was just something so perfectly _close_ about the whole thing, something that was so tightly knit but still had room for him and he just couldn't help but be in awe again and again that he fit so well into their tradition.

"I'm going to change," Kairi huffed, throwing the uncomfortable cushion back onto the couch and grabbing her bag from the kitchen table; she began to remove bobby-pins from her hair, shaking it loose, as she disappeared into the hall bathroom.

Sora glanced at Riku.

Riku glanced back at him.

"Get comfortable," Sora demanded.

"I am comfortable," Riku replied, and it was the truth.

"You're going to sleep in your clothes?"

Riku blinked a few times before his eyes widened ever so slightly, because he wasn't like them—he wasn't a PJ kind of guy; every other time he'd stayed at someone's house, he'd just... "Oh, I...uh, no."

"Then get changed."

"...Sure." Riku leaned forward to peer down the hall; both Sora's mother's door and the bathroom door were closed, slivers of light peeking out between the frame and the floor signifying that the two of them were alone in the living room. For the time being.

Riku stood up on the blankets with Sora flopped at his feet and began to unbutton his pants.

It was a good long moment before Sora got the words formed, his jaw already dropped and his lips working, but after such he hissed, "Riku, what are you doing?!"

Riku stopped with his pants halfway to his knees, knowing that Sora had a flawless view of his undershorts but not really caring much either way because hey, it was Sora and it wasn't like they hadn't knocked hips a few times, and hey, it wasn't like he was wearing briefs, and hey, he might seriously be blushing, too, but he wanted to be intimate enough to flash Sora his boxers every now and then. He cut a sea-green glimpse at Sora through a curtain of platinum hair, wondering if he was pulling the innocence act again or if it was true shock. After all, Sora was good at_ playing_ naïve, but he could also be pretty serious about it. "I don't have any pajamas, so I just sleep in my..."

His voice petered out after he caught the faint spark of fear in Sora's eyes and he knew that it wasn't an act.

_My dad hurt me. Really, really bad._

Sora's cheeks were pale and the blue of his eyes was like tarnished metal—and Riku wasn't _dumb_. He knew what was going through Sora's head. His stomach dropped and he suddenly felt very, very guilty—for forgetting as well as instigating the memories—and he decided he'd keep his pants on for the time being. Clearly, despite Sora's newfound ability to get physical, there were still some sturdy boundaries. But they were teenage boys and his patience would only last so much longer, and boundaries were made to be pushed. It was the only way to get past them, right?

Riku straightened up, hoisting his jeans up to his waist again and fumbling with the button; clearing his throat, brows furrowed, he propped his hands on his hips and whispered apologetically, "Well, um...do you have any gym shorts or something I could borrow?"

Sora was silent for what seemed like forever, staring up at him with eyes clouded by too many thoughts to decipher a coherent one, and that hush made Riku entirely uneasy. God, he hoped he hadn't ruined anything between them. All of it had been so carefully structured, so delicately formed. God, he _really_ hoped he hadn't ruined anything between them. Seriously, if Sora wasn't ready to see his boxers, then he'd fuck that whole "I'm a healthy teenage boy, of course I think about sex" cliché and take an oath of abstinence until he _was_ ready. (Even though he'd probably pray for an opportunity to break it.)

The rain started up again and the sound of it hitting the roof pounded through the silence. The staring wasn't even the good kind, full of explanations and lovers' telepathy; it was the empty kind, the barricade of _wanting _to be heard but not loud enough just yet.

Abruptly, the bathroom door opened and Kairi strode back into the living room, a perfectly timed distraction: both boys looked away from each other and towards her as she dropped her bag beside the couch, the scent of face-soap and perfume following her out. Her hair was twisted into a bun that was falling apart more than it was staying together, too short for such a 'do, and her sweatshirt and bluejeans had been replaced by an over-sized T-shirt (_Do the Dew_) and tiny gray shorts; Riku couldn't help but wonder with a bitter frown if Sora had ever noticed how long and slender her legs were.

Kairi slowly turned to answer their stares, blinking rapidly and then raising a brow. "Can I help you?" she asked.

Sora dismissed her, shifting his gaze back to Riku and leaning into the edge of the couch with his cheek propped in his palm. "In my room... The clean clothes are on the foot of my bed. You can wear something of mine."

"Oh, Riku, you came unprepared!" Kairi teased, but the sharp glances she got from both boys shut her up immediately. She pulled a pair of socks out of her bag and began to put them on, brows risen and lips pursed, as if affronted.

Riku skirted the television and hurried down the hall towards Sora's room without another word. His heart was pounding. He was suddenly _pissed_ and he didn't really know why.

He just didn't want Sora to associate..._that_ with _him_.

He slid through Sora's open door, pausing in the threshold just long enough to look at the "Security Device Enclosed" sticker on the face of the door, right above the yellow "WARNING!" one. Sora had put them up one afternoon before that Friday when Riku had tried kissing him the first time; they always made him smile. Tonight, they made him frown gently.

Riku flipped on the light and looked around the room, although he was already well-acquainted with the lay of the land—desk and piles of books to his left, unbalanced closet to his right, bed across from him and cardboard boxes here and there, the place covered in posters, pictures, and candy wrappers. The blinds were drawn as always, and there was indeed a pile of clean clothes tossed across the foot of the bed. He moved to the bedside, slowly sifting through the clothes and searching for at least some gym shorts, but all he found was a pair of flannel pajama pants. Holding them up, he frowned further, lips twisted in thought. There wasn't _that much_ of a difference between he and Sora, and it was a given that most guys wore a size too big, anyway; he surely wouldn't have trouble fitting into his pants, right?

"Those aren't mine."

Riku turned slightly, blinking over his shoulder at the source of the tetchy voice even though he already knew who it was. "Oh...?" he inquired, frown dissipating. He looked away from Sora, in the doorway with his arms at his sides and a dark frown on his face, and looked again to the pair of pants in his grasp. "They're not?"

"They're Roxas's."

Riku dropped them to the bed and began to go through the pile in search of another article of clothing to borrow.

"Well, he doesn't have _cooties._" Sora sighed heavily and Riku heard him trudging into the room, coming up behind him and then heading over to the closet. Riku watched him from the corner of his eyes, watched as he dug around in the clothes discarded on the closet floor, and eventually straightened up with a pair of white basketball shorts. "Here. These are kind of big, though..."

"That's fine."

Riku reached for them, and Sora started to hand them over but paused with his arm almost outstretched, frowning with his brows drawn together delicately. His eyes, troubled, sought out Riku's and locked on, the frown on his lips moving as if he were trying to decide what he felt, and it made him look close to tears. Riku didn't particularly like that expression. He took the gym shorts with a flick of his forearm, his frown returning sharper than ever. "Sorry if I made you uncomfortable."

"It's not what you think, though... I was just kind of shocked, like...'Woah, Riku's taking his pants off' and it was just—"

"Too much too fast?" He could recall his conscience warning him about something along those lines.

"Not exactly. Just surprised me."

"I scared you, right?"

"_Surprised_ me, I said."

Riku smirked fondly, because he was well aware that as long as Sora kept his eyes locked onto Riku's face, he was fine with the fact that Riku had just doffed his jeans and pulled on the borrowed gym shorts, right there in front of him. He considered then, as he straightened up, shrugged off his black work-shirt, and looked over at the sly but still oh-so shy brunet, considered asking _What if I told you I had intentions of giving you an extra special birthday present tonight?_

But he didn't.

Sora took a slow breath, shutting his eyes for its duration, and Riku had a feeling it was to steady himself, to get over everything right then and there as he grabbed a pair of pajama pants lying across the room. He didn't change there; he clutched the cotton pants in his fist and if the door hadn't been open and Sora's mother hadn't been coming out of her room brushing her wet hair, Riku would have hopped across the room and given him a deep, perfect kiss in something like resurgence and reassurance all in one. But maybe Sora got that promise just from looking in his eyes because he was smiling at him, faintly, and Riku wondered if he even knew that his mouth had perked up at the corners. He guessed he didn't, because his eyes were a little distant but there was a sense of sudden relief about him that was impossible to miss. It was like another emotional earthquake took place then, a regular 7.0 on the Richter scale, and Sora shot back into reality with the force of a firecracker going off.

"MOM!" he howled, and Riku jumped, eyes widening a bit; Sora zipped to his doorway and leaned partially into the hall, pants still fisted in one hand. "Hey, pick a movie, Ma," he said then, and the softness of his tone indicated that his mother was closer than he'd calculated to begin with.

Her voice drifted down the hall from somewhere near its threshold: "Another?"

"Yeah—" Sora pivoted, grabbed Riku by the wrist, gave him a depthless glance from below his lashes, a warning and a promise and a smile all at once, and then Sora dragged the other boy after him as he bopped down the hallway. "Yeah, pick another one, Mom—we'll watch one more, your choice!"

"But you're the birthday boy," his mother insisted with a sly tilt of her lips.

"Agh, shut up!" Sora shook his head and laughed, blushing at such a juvenile title as "birthday boy", and Riku shivered. Yeah, they'd get over_ that_ bump in the road. Totally would.

Sora gave his wrist a little squeeze, then swung away from his side and into the bathroom to change, adamantly instructing that his mother choose the next movie. Riku lingered by the mouth of the hallway, and after a moment he realized that someone was staring at him; he looked to the side and saw Kairi at the table putting her cell phone into her bag. But her eyes were on him, and she had a tiny, knowing smile on her face.

Riku smiled in return, and his shoulders drooped with a release of tension he hadn't been aware of.

Yeah. He liked them. He liked all three of them.

* * *

Mrs. Kaimana ended up choosing a romantic comedy and after approximately ten minutes, Sora and Riku left the women on the couch and started a game of poker at the kitchen table, using pieces of candy for chips.

Sora was, surprisingly, very good. He had a sucker in his mouth, the white stick dancing on his lips and his teeth clicking on the candy when he spoke. It could have very well been a cigarette for all the natural dexterity Sora had with it between his jaws. And Riku found it intriguing. Cute. Kind of alluring.

He was _such_ a loser. For real.

Sora's mother headed to bed after her movie was over; she hugged her movie-buddy, giving her a kiss on the temple and then swinging up off the couch, trundling over to kiss her son happy birthday and good-night whilst giving her son's other friend a one-armed hug.

"I'm glad you made it," Mrs. Kaimana said, and Riku was a bit cowed beneath the thankful grin she sent his way. He swallowed, knew he was blushing, and nodded uncertainly. "I'm serious," she murmured, her hand still on his back, right beneath his neck and between his shoulder-blades. Riku blinked a few times, feeling Sora's heavy gaze on him, feeling the pressure to say something back, but all he could do was form a coy little smile and nod again. Her gratitude made him think about the two of them laughing hysterically when the little boy got shocked on the fence during _Jurassic Park_, laughing so hard that Kairi and Sora stared at him like they were the cruelest, most demented people on the earth, and that was when his smile upped itself into a grin and Riku shrugged limply.

"I'm glad I did, too," he said, and she gave him another tight hug before she reeled Sora towards them and hugged them both at once. The two exchanged glances, both wondering if perhaps she knew more than they thought she did but finding the other just as surprised, and before they could really establish something about it, she pecked Sora's temple and drifted off down the hallway.

Sora's face was red and he immediately moved away to drop down at the table, where a bag of Twizzlers and some lollipops littered its surface. Cheek propped in his palm and his other finger tapping the edge of the table petulantly, he stared darkly at Riku, almost pouting, and Riku stared back, grinning now.

"You guys wanna join me or what?" Kairi peeped. She sat all alone in the blanket-bed between the couch and the TV, arms crossed. "We have an hour to waste until midnight, you know."

"What's at midnight?" Riku asked.

"That's when I'm officially fifteen," Sora said. "I mean, I was born around dinnertime, but at midnight it'll be Sunday and that means it's December second and that means I'm officially fifteen."

"Oh." Riku smiled, and Sora was caught momentarily breathless by the crescents his eyes had become, intense aquamarine lined by lashes he noticed with sudden keenness were unbelievably perfect. Long, thick, black-as-black and impossible to miss within the platinum sheen of his hair, and Sora thought then that Riku looked genuinely content. He wondered if the older boy was aware of this, and if so, why he wasn't putting up his usual front of I'm-Too-Cool-To-Care.

Sora smiled in return, and then he beat Riku to their bed of blankets between the couch and the television, even if Riku didn't join the race in the first place.

Kairi lasted through one and a half episodes of _3rd Rock From the Sun_. At eleven she was merely yawning, but after about forty-five minutes, she was beginning to nod off and she only stayed with them until midnight because for the last thirteen minutes, Sora continually pinched her side and giggled at her groggy insistence that she was still awake and he had nothing to worry about. Riku sat pleasantly with his arms folded and his ankles crossed, corner of his mouth quirked and his eyes at half-mast as he was seemingly unbothered by their wriggling and snickering but was actually paying concurrent attention to both the show and the two next to him.

* * *

The stroke of midnight swung around soon after and on the dot, Kairi threw her arms around Sora, smashing her nose into his cheek as she cried, "Happy birthday, Sora! I'm going to pass out now, okay?"

Sora laughed; Riku shivered, tipped his head back, took a slow breath through his nose because _God_, that sound...

"Thanks a bunch, Kairi."

"Nooo problemooo. Nighty-night, boys." She punctuated with a gentle tap on Sora's knee and then Riku's shoulder, and when he looked at her, she smiled fondly and drew back both hands.

"Good night, Kairi," Riku murmured, brushing hair out of his eyes and smiling meekly across the dark living room at her as she settled down onto her pillow. Sora reached over and trailed his knuckles along her temple a few times; briefly, Riku felt that possessive pinch in his gut again, souring up into his chest and tightening his throat, but he knew that they were close and he also knew that _he _and Sora were even closer, and that the sooner Kairi fell asleep, the sooner he could give Sora his birthday present.

_That 70's Show_ came on next, and for half an hour they waited patiently for her to dip off into unconsciousness. Sora gave Riku a glance after he settled into his pillow, keeping his distance for a moment with his knees drawn up and the blanket held at his chin, and in that glance he told Riku to just _wait. _After a few minutes, he closed the gap between them and beneath the light cotton quilt, their hands fumbled around and then found each other, tangled together between their hips. Another five ticked by and Sora's head was propped against Riku's, and Riku's thumb stroked along Sora's knuckles as they bade their time for absolute aloneness.

Riku's eyes slid to the side, focusing on Sora from below his lashes. He looked lost in thought. Dreamy, almost...but not tired. That was good.

_My dad hurt me. Really, really bad._

_I think he might have been crazy, Riku_.

_A part of me died that night..._

"Happy birthday," Riku whispered against his ear, and Sora both stiffened and smiled at the same time. He gave Riku's hand a little squeeze; the older boy tilted his head, brushing his lips along the curve of Sora's jawline.

"Riku," he hissed in warning, giving him a sharp look from the corner of his eyes. In the dancing shadows of the TV-lit living room, it was amazingly arousing.

"I know I didn't buy you a gift..."

"I didn't ask for one."

"Sora, it's sort of expected to buy someone a gift for their birthday."

"I didn't _want_ one."

"I have one."

Sora turned to him fully now, a quizzical expression looking nothing short of delectable on his face, brows knotted and lips skewed. "But I thought you said...?"

"I didn't buy it."

_It's not what you think, though. I was just kind of shocked._

_I trust you, Riku._

"Then...what is it?"

Riku tightened his grip on the other boy's hand and leaned in, catching Sora's lips in his and proceeding with a careful kiss. He felt Sora tense up beside him, knew he was probably more aware of Kairi lying behind them than Riku pressed up against him, but after a moment Sora's fingertips dusted Riku's cheek and he returned the kiss before pulling away as quietly as he could.

"...Riku..."

His tongue darted out along his lower lip, tasting Sora there and loving everything that lingered. "Hnm...?"

"..._Kairi_." Sora pointed over his shoulder rather emphatically, and the wide-eyed stare of _How dare you? _made Riku snort to keep his laughter in.

"She's out _cold_, Sora."

"So what? I can't do that behind my friend's back. Riku, I'm behind her back. _Literally_."

"Well, _shh_, then."

Abruptly, Sora's hand shot out and clutched Riku's empty one, standing up and tugging the other boy with him. "Come on. Let's go somewhere else."

Riku blinked stupidly, but after a second or two he realized he was the one who had been leading, not Sora, so he let Sora pull him off the ground and followed. His pace steadied after a few steps and his fingers tightened on Sora's, and he had his eyes set on Sora's bedroom when the jerk on his arm and his slight loss of footing indicated that Sora had stopped rather decisively in front of the bathroom.

"Not my room." Sora stared, eyes wide and fearful but somehow completely bright with more positive emotions at the same time.

"Hunh?"

"My mom can sleep like a rock sometimes and I don't think Kairi will be too nosy, but don't you think it'll be really suspicious if me and you disappeared into my bedroom?" He was leaning against the bathroom threshold now, free hand curled loosely on the wooden door frame and his softly frowning face tipped to the side.

Fleetingly, Riku remembered the two of them on the couch a week and a half ago, kissing vigorously and tangled up together atop the off-white cushions, and how Sora's hips had been just as active as Riku's and there had been no bad memories to come between them. And that recollection—in the hallway as Sora flipped on the bathroom light and continued to peer imploringly at his silver-haired boyfriend, innocent and curious with the half-light turning his skin a smooth olive and their hands still entwined—that recollection of no pain and no fear and no hesitation reminded him that Sora was leading him into the bathroom and that meant he at least had _some_ idea of what Riku could possibly have to give.

How in the world could Sora be appalled by Riku taking his pants off, and then adamant to get him alone in the bathroom, all in one evening?

_I trust you, Riku_.

Ah... Right.

Riku slipped into the bathroom with Sora and closed the door behind him, pushed the lock in and suddenly felt his stomach fill with lead and his heart skyrocket, and then he noticed that Sora had turned on the light near the shower so the bathroom was only half-lit and that was romantic. In a quaint, rather Harlequin way. But still romantic.

Sora pulled his hand out of Riku's and propped himself against the edge of the sink; its countertop was littered with little things—a toothbrush and two different kinds of toothpaste, a comb, a bottle of AXE and a matching stick of deodorant, and in a basket shoved into the corner where the sink met wall and mirror were a few other items under the AXE line, these labeled Phoenix instead of Kilo. From beneath these extra toiletries peeked a bottle of göt2be hair spray and its matching gel. On the floor was a blue bathmat, crawling with typically yellow rubber ducks, and Riku wondered whose decorative touch that one had been; he could already tell Sora's contribution to the room were the pieces of clothing tossed carelessly in the corner between the bathtub and toilet.

Slowly, sea-green eyes drifted back around to meet cobalt, and Sora smiled. It was nervous, a perfect first-time glow spreading across his face. Riku's hands slid past Sora's waist and he propped his own palms on the cool surface of the sink, leaning closer until there was but an inch between them and Sora was all but caged against the sink's counter. He could smell Riku's breath, sharp and sweet and something like the Dubble Bubble he'd stolen from Sora's poker chips earlier. His heart fluttered somewhere between its throne in his breastbone and the lump in his throat that he couldn't swallow past, and Sora let his lashes droop as he took a feeble breath.

Riku let his lips brush along Sora's and at first Sora's mouth didn't move in response, only stayed parted and sent tingling little messages of joy flying through his nerves and into his brain, then down into his stomach where every sensation provided flight to another butterfly. His fingers twitched, found Riku's and took hold, and when his back arched with a few coy shivers he cocked his head back and opened his mouth and the kisses went from brief and chaste to deep and needy in one short instant. He heard a small noise from Riku, startled or satisfied or maybe both, and then his fingertips tightened and he craned forward, furthering their liplock. Riku pressed into him and Sora leaned back, holding his hand out to support his body instead of relying awkwardly on the countertop. His hand hooked on a faucet knob, jerked as he shifted so the lip of the sink wouldn't dig into his tailbone; water started to run.

They moved with all the finesse of impatient teenagers, not once slipping out of the fluid rhythm of their lips as Riku backed up and Sora staggered forward, hands moving up to clutch at the gray T-shirt separating his fingertips from Riku's skin. The taller boy's digits slithered down Sora's sides to rest at his tailbone and his shoulders thudded into the wall; he grabbed Sora by the waist and put _him_ to the wall instead. Then he turned, squaring his feet outside of Sora's and leaning in to begin again, and that was when the hands at his shoulders suddenly became open palms and they didn't grab onto his T-shirt but instead slammed into his chest and the mouth he'd been aiming for suddenly whipped to the left with the rest of its visage.

Sora continued to pant, chest rising and falling rapidly, and Riku wasn't sure if it was because he was heated up and ready for another round or if something had reared its ugly head in the back of his mind and was keeping him from enjoying his birthday present to the fullest.

"Riku," Sora swallowed, and it clicked within his constricted throat, "please. Not against the wall."

"But—"

"No buts. _Please_, Riku." Sora turned eyes upon him that looked as though the perfect blue of his irises had shattered into shards of emotion. It was captivating, beautiful in a way, but unsettling more than anything else. "_Not against the wall_."

He made the connection then, the connection between the wall and sex, and for a moment Riku wanted to argue with _But I thought he raped you on the floor, not the wall_. But after that he just thought he was more or less the world's most impassive jackass, and he nodded and licked his lips and wondered what he should suggest now to make Sora comfortable again, when Sora surprised him even more with:

"Let's get on the floor."

"The floor—the_ bathroom floor?" _Riku asked in sheer disbelief, and Sora frowned; with his cheeks that pink, it looked more like a pout.

"I'll lay a towel down or something..."

He didn't wait for approval, which was cute; Sora pulled a light green towel off the stand in the corner of the room and turned, laying it down with a carefulness that looked as though it should have been used at the beach on a sunny day, and after Sora found the towel-blanket suitable, he straightened up, put his hands on his hips, and glanced at Riku from below his lashes and behind some messy locks of hair. Riku couldn't help but smile. He wasn't used to such unconventionality. Seriously. But he loved it.

He held out his hand and Sora took it, gingerly gripping his palm and easing down onto the towel. Riku followed to his knees and placed his hands to either side of the boy settling himself onto the floor. His eyes were shut, his shoulders relaxing, and after a moment his lashes fluttered open and Sora stared up at him where he hovered, caught absolutely rapt by the boy spread beneath him like that. He was sexy, and that was a thrilling thing to feel, but it was also heart-warming and he indulged in both sides of it. He suddenly found it hard to swallow.

"I'm not like him," he mumbled then, gawking down at Sora. A chill snaked along his spine.

Sora was motionless. Then he licked his lips, abysmal eyes locked on Riku's face, and he didn't answer verbally but instead reached up and hung his arms about the other boy's shoulders, positioning himself more comfortably to keep from angling harshly against the floor. He tipped his chin up, stared grimly as Riku's fingertips dusted along his temple to push stray hair away from that soulful gaze.

"You..." Riku paused, eyes flicking along Sora's as if searching their depths for his next words. "...You know what your present is, right?"

Sora took a slow breath, let it out through his nose. "Yeah."

"And you're okay?"

"Yeah."

"You promise?"

"I promise."

Their lips met softly, briefly, and Sora smiled as Riku drew away. He focused on him through his lashes and Riku returned the stare, propped on his elbows now and draped over Sora—and then the tension of the unspoken popped and their mouths crashed together in another kiss. Riku shifted, supporting his weight on his left arm as his right fingers began to venture along Sora's side, dancing down his neck and over his shoulder and up and down his stomach. A satisfied sigh drifted out from the younger boy's lips, into Riku's, and were received with a shudder of enthusiasm. Silver strands of hair danced into incorrigible tawny as their chins dipped and tilted with every movement of their mouths.

Riku's tongue shied forward then, touched curiously against Sora's bottom lip, and it was slick and smooth and every bit inviting. Sora gasped, not sensually but truly out of surprise—in spite of that, his mouth opened further and their tongues rolled together, met just above his teeth. Sora concentrated on this new sensation, skin crawling with heated shivers, and suddenly hips rolled down into his, making his back arch and his head cock back and the butterflies in his lower gut do a little dance. He broke the kiss as his head tilted back and his tongue hung out upon his lower lip before he reeled it in, drawing a sharp breath.

His eyes searched frantically for the aquamarine hidden behind silver locks. "Riku—"

_I'm not like him, I'm not like him, I'm not like him._

"Hnm?"

_Not like him._

Sora's fingers twitched, hooking where they'd drifted onto Riku's hips. His gray TCHS soccer shirt had slipped up a few inches and Sora's nails pricked into the pale skin just above the waistband of those borrowed gym shorts; his body stretched, heels digging into the floor to keep himself comfortable as he rocked upwards in response.

The sigh that escaped Riku's lips squeaked ever so slightly, the sound of a soft moan being denied and its strained voice exiting beneath his breath as it died away in the back of his throat. They had a smooth pattern of undulation going now. Sora's hands tightened and his fingernails were really noticeable here and he hissed, "_Riku—_"

Riku cut a glance in Sora's direction, concerned; his face was writ over with something strung between pleasure and uncertainty, and Riku pressed his nose against Sora's cheek and whispered, "What is it?" because he had a feeling there was more going on behind those eyes than required. Hell, he was still on edge, too, standing there with fragile balance and not daring look over his shoulder at the danger he'd be facing lest he fall. But again Sora didn't answer, only bucked upwards and clung to him tightly; he wound his arms about his torso, then reconsidered this and slid his palms up Riku's back, beneath the cotton tee. Riku shivered, eyes falling to half-mast as he let out the breath he'd been holding, and Sora's hands traced along his spine, his shoulders, his chest with a delicate kind of erotica.

He pulled away to straddle atop him, noticing now just how perfect the dim lighting in the bathroom really was. Sora's hands lingered on his skin as he reached over his shoulder, grabbing hold of his collar from the back and tugging off his shirt; he dropped it near the little stand of towels. Sora's hands fell away as he sat up on his elbow and sighed in a way almost dreamy. Riku frowned, sheepish.

"You're so muscular."

"I know."

"But you're so thin at the same time."

"I know."

"So smooth..." Sora's fingertips were trailing up his arm now, over his bicep and down his clavicle, tickling their way down his chest to his stomach, swirling between his pecs again before tracing the curve of his other shoulder. His eyes were bright, distant, seemingly mesmerized, and Riku wondered if he was seriously that fascinated. Maybe he was just being impatient. Or maybe Sora was actually being very sensual and Riku just wouldn't relax because he was too frightened of Sora's emotional faultline.

"...Riku?"

"Hunh?"

"How far do you wanna go?"

He blinked a few times, as if he didn't find the last five seconds to be part of reality, but instead some hormonal fantasy that he was dreaming on their bed of blankets out by the television—perhaps induced by the episode of _That 70's Show _they'd been watching before he drifted off unknowingly, or something like that. But after his lashes stopped fluttering and he settled his gaze on Sora, Riku realized it wasn't fake and Sora was actually waiting very calmly for an answer. _How far do you wanna go?_ God, what a loaded question. It was full of so many different sentiments, insinuations, and thoughts, and yet it was as simple as that—Sora wanted to know so he could prepare himself. That was all.

The only thing keeping Riku from forming a perfectly level reply was the fact that he had no idea how far he _did_ want to go. It had more or less been how far he _could_ go. Until now, of course.

Sora was propped up on outstretched arms, head lolled gently to one shoulder and his amazingly blue eyes hooded and locked on him, lips shut but looking incredibly delicious, and his cheeks were flushed and his hair was even more messy than usual and Riku wondered if _his_ heart was pounding, if _his_ stomach was knotted, if _his_ muscles were beginning to wake up down there, and if _his_ intentions were anything close to Riku's at all.

"I want..." He licked his lips. They were like fucking sand paper. "...I want to go as far as _you _want to go. It's your birthday, and your present."

Sora stared at him, perhaps trying to discern whether or not that was well-played romantics or the absolute truth, and he must have read it in Riku's eyes because he craned up and gave him a soft kiss, warm and dry. He pulled him down again, and the feel of palms on bare skin was close to tingling.

It was a long moment of nothing more than they'd really ever done before, a bit of shy grinding as teeth grazed lower lip and tongues twisted into the cheek. And then Riku's hand snuck lower. His knuckles brushed Sora's stomach and then his lap, and then he boldly placed his hand down between his thighs and Sora was quiet. Didn't seem to notice, in fact. Riku nosed into the curve of his neck and took a deep breath, waiting for a reaction of any sorts, and then he realized that he'd never imagined he'd really get this close to someone. Especially not a stupid freshman who he hadn't even meant to start talking to anyway, and now here he was in his bathroom with his hand between his legs and his tongue in his mouth and he thought that this was the best place he'd ever been in his life.

God, he wanted him. _So _bad.

Sora's left hand tangled within the silver hair falling into his face, ran up to the back of Riku's neck and then to the base of his skull, his fingertips beginning to swirl there. It was soothing, but Riku still needed to know if he was allowed further or not. He ran a thumb along the crotch of the other boy's pajama pants to solicit a reply, felt the hard-on hidden beneath now with his hand instead of his own lap, and just as he marveled at how he could arouse the other boy so thoroughly was when Sora responded differently. His back arched, his body trembled, his legs twitched apart and he let out a low moan, breathy and well-aware of its volume limit. And Riku nearly melted right then and there. For numerous reasons, but the coherent one was that it was _okay_. That was all he'd been hoping for, really.

Sora cupped Riku's face in his palms, kissed him quickly and rolled his hips upwards.

"Riku—" he gritted out, tersely. Riku tensed, fearing the worst already.

"Sora, I—"

"Riku..."

That was when he realized what Sora was doing: he called his name but had nothing to say, didn't have an answer for Riku's response because the only thing he'd wanted was to hear his voice. To remind himself that it was Riku and not his father.

Riku thrust his face down and kissed him again, hard, and as he moved his hand between Sora's legs, the kisses became hungrier and hungrier until he was bucking and squirming and digging his nails into Riku's sides, groaning for more.

"Sora—Sora, shh..."

"_Please_, Riku—"

It was astonishing, but Sora managed to, in one abrupt, offhand motion, roll them both over so Riku was the one on the floor and Sora was rocking and grinding down on top of him and he was making crazy noises, crazy-good noises, all into Riku's neck. His nose was shoved against his ear and oh, the noises—oh, the breath—oh, the feel of his lips and his fingers and his body and his erection—

"Sora, wait," Riku demanded sharply, throat dry.

"What...? _What_?" His eyes were wide and shocked, as if embarrassed of his forward actions.

"Can I..." Riku almost couldn't say it after seeing such a look of honest perplexity cross Sora's brow, but he found the strength to drag it out, albeit breathless and grumbled. "Can I, you know, go inside?"

Sora gawked at him, eyes widening further and not at all confused anymore. Not alluring, either. _Guilty_ was more the proper term here, and for what, Riku didn't know...except for not being a virgin like he was, but that was definitely beside the point. He held up his index finger, brows furrowing. "Can I go inside with my finger, I mean?"

He really hadn't expected a _Yes_.

Sora swallowed. He stared. He blinked a few times and then swallowed again. Then he nodded, and he had that pinched expression on his face again, that halfway-between-crying-and-moaning look.

Riku spoke as his hand slid over Sora's butt, slowly, because it was amazing to touch. Taut and tiny and perfect beneath his pajama pants (his jeans, too), and Sora wouldn't look away from him for anything but that was alright. More than alright, even. It was Riku's turn to swallow past that lump in his throat; just petting Sora's buttocks like that—just slipping his hand under the waistband of his pants, into his boxers—made his stomach jump and the muscles in his groin quiver in delight, made his pants just a little tighter than they already were.

"Riku..." Sora implored, and he didn't look shy or lusty even though Riku's hand was down his freaking pants; instead he looked abnormally calm and actually a little grave.

He licked his lips again, rose his brows, wondered if Sora could read his thoughts on his face or not. "Hunh?"

"Aren't you gonna...get your finger wet?"

Riku blinked. "Why?"

"It will _hurt me_ if you don't." Sora frowned, appearing frustrated that Riku hadn't been aware of that to begin with. Riku blinked in surprise, at first wondering where Sora had learned how to have sex (he guessed counseling or something like that), and then he wondered why _he_ hadn't learned anything in detail like that before.

"Well...what should I do?" he snapped, frowning curtly in embarrassment as his cheeks burned, but before he could finish his inquiry completely, Sora pulled his hand out of his pants and opened his mouth. And without further explanation as Riku's words trailed off into unsteady little grunts, Sora stared down at Riku and, confident their eyes were locked, slid the boy's finger into his mouth.

Riku's back curved. He gasped, free hand gripping the towel beneath them, and he husked out, "Sora—?"

Sora glanced away, sheepish, but he continued to suck on the finger he held in his mouth, the others twitching against his chin. He rocked back onto his heels, straddling the older boy, and he felt his arousal at the front of the borrowed gym shorts, stiff and tempting where it prodded between his very upper thighs.

Stiff and thick and intruding, tearing him apart from the inside out, burning and throbbing and—

No. No, no, no. Hard against his upper thighs, against the beginning of his butt, below his privacies and patiently awaiting release.

Riku.

Riku, on the floor beneath him, yearning to fuck him. That thought made Sora tremble, made his body hot, made him wonder why he didn't just shove all those bad thoughts away and welcome the good—the good being that Riku Hayate was lying under him and utterly vulnerable to his emotions and his desires and all because he loved Sora _just that much_.

He drew Riku's finger out of his mouth; a string of spittle followed but snapped after a centimeter or so, falling to his lower lip. He swiped it away with the back of his knuckles and leaned down to his hands and knees again. "When two people love each other very much..."

Riku pried his eyes open. He hadn't even been aware they'd been clenched shut. "What...?" he whispered.

"That's what I was always told," Sora murmured, smiling timidly as he directed Riku's hand back around his waist. "That 'when two people love each other very much, they _make_ love'. Haven't your parents ever told you that?"

"A-ah...no. Well, yes. Kind of. I—"

"Riku, you need to go in before it gets too dry or it'll hurt me."

"Yeah, um, 'kay. Sorry."

"It's okay..." He stroked his upper arm as Riku maneuvered his hand back into his pants, slipping his finger between his buttocks and then halting altogether, because he didn't know what to do. Sora's brows furrowed, lashes lowering on modest eyes. "Riku...?"

"Sorry. Sorry..."

"You can't miss it," Sora scoffed, and Riku had to bite his lip against a pleased grunt because apart from the gentle cynicism, that look he shot him was _hot. _Either way, he was right—he found his entrance and edged his finger inside, holding his breath and hoping to God he was doing it right.

Sora's head was bowed and his face wasn't visible, but his palms were placed to either side of Riku's torso and his fingers fisted hard into the towel as he penetrated him with his forefinger. Deeper and deeper inside he slid, carefully, shyly, and it was only as he sat up on his elbow did Riku remember to exhale, and inhale thereafter. Sora's insides were hot and wet, his interior's wall ribbed and yet smooth at the same time. Sora's shoulders quivered, drawn together; his lean muscles were straining, flexed along his shoulders and arms, and Riku wondered if he was clutching the towel so tightly because he was in pain.

"Does it hurt?" he asked, not without an absent grimace on his face, as well.

Sora shook his head quickly, panting, and then he began to rock back and forth in a gentle sway, sending Riku's finger in and out in a slow, controlled rhythm. _Swinging, swinging, it's like I'm swinging_, Sora thought. And it was at that moment, in that instance, that the very idea of what had happened four years ago drifted away and left them alone, and when Sora's thighs were tired of sending him back and forth Riku pulled his finger out (reluctantly).

Sora's hands immediately moved between their hips, grabbing on to Riku's member where it strained against two layers of shorts. The silver-haired boy shook his head, unable to speak any longer, and for a moment they lay a tangled mass of hormones and curiosity. Then the thrusting began again, bodies grinding together as lips traveled everywhere, from acquiescing mouths to a chin, a cheek, an ear, deep into a neck.

Riku's eyes were bright, locked onto Sora's, and Sora whimpered into the back of his hand as he writhed, the sensation between his legs escalating from throbbing to tingle-itching to something absolutely amazing but utterly unbearable.

Riku nosed against his forehead, gave him a peck on the corner of the mouth and huffed, "You know I love you."

Sora came first.

He just fell right over the edge, already in a daze of ecstasy but spiraling into something totally unreal as his body moved of its own volition and he did his best to keep the cries that escaped buried in the nape of Riku's neck. Riku's hand clawed for Sora's, lacing their fingers and gripping tight enough for his knuckles to ache as he followed suit, other hand scrambling for something else to grab onto, settling for the floor, nails raking against the faded mock linoleum as he released.

Silence settled over the bathroom, slowly. Tenderly. And then:

"Sora...?"

"Hunh?"

"The sink is on."

* * *

It was two in the morning when they carefully crawled back into the bed of blankets spread out in the living room, and they were both wearing fresh shorts.

* * *

Yuuko Kaimana took a long, thoughtful sip of her coffee. It was just what she needed this morning—strong. The house was bright, a pasty gray sky revealed with the living room curtains pulled and a pile of laundry on the couch below, waiting to be taken to the Laundromat later that afternoon. It smelled like breakfast, and behind that candles and all-purpose cleaner.

She watched her son absently, from the corner of her eye. He wasn't chowing down like normal; he was merely poking at his eggs, smiling at them like he saw the face of Christ in the syrup or something, and he was quiet and placid and not at all his usual morning self of ravenous appetite and groggy stares.

"Sugar?"

"Yeah, Ma?"

Well, he was very alert, too. Another difference from oh, say, yesterday morning, when he'd almost fallen back asleep at the table after staggering, wrapped in a blanket, from his bedroom to the kitchen.

"You sleep alright last night?"

He blinked, shifting his gaze up to meet hers. Innocent. Light-hearted. Happy. Not sleepy in the_ least._ "Yeah. You?"

"Just fine. Your friends sure went home early, hunh?" Yuuko smiled, transferring her cup to one hand and slicing into her omelet with the other.

"Kairi had to go to her dad's before he left for work so she could get all her stuff and Riku had to get home before ten, anyway." He shrugged, propping his cheek on his knuckles.

"...Oh." She nodded, eyeing him over the rim of her coffee mug. He stabbed a forkful of eggs, swirled them in some syrup, and started to space out again as he snatched the bite off the utensil with a clink of his teeth against the metal. She sighed softly, tucking a leg up beneath the opposite thigh, and sat in silence for a moment before setting her coffee down, her fork afterwards.

"Sugar?"

Sora blinked again, coming back down from his cloud and focusing on his mother again. "...What?"

She didn't reply for a second or two, fiddling with the grip of her coffee mug and looking her son up and down, scrutinizing every inch of him. He stared, waiting patiently for her to start talking again. She slumped a bit, sighing faintly once again as she realized he really didn't look much different than he ever had. Maybe a little more mature in the chin and the eyes, but still her cherub-faced son who had perfected the space-cadet expression into something unique and lovable.

"Mom...?"

"Nothing, honey... I'm just looking at you."

"Going all _maternal_ on me, right?"

Yuuko chuckled sharply, nodded her head and lifted her coffee to her chin again. "Yeah, babe. Going all _maternal_." _How about going all _Sherlock_,_ she scoffed internally, and looked to the tabletop as she drew a slow sip from her drink. She knew that there was just something she was missing when it came to that new friend of her son's, that Riku boy. She could just tell. Of course, she wasn't really worried about anything, but there was just this little knot of suspicion in her gut that he was some kind of new influence Sora had never experienced before. After all, he'd been more lively lately, had a different spark in his eyes.

"Does Riku know about Roxas?" she asked brusquely. Sora's hand stopped halfway to his mouth and lagged in the air for a moment before drifting back down to the tabletop. He frowned, staring at his food silently. She didn't move either, waiting for his reply.

"Yes," he finally said, and it was calm and pointed and highly contradictory with his hanging head.

"That's good."

"I told you before, Mom, after you acted all rude in front of him—he's one of my best friends, and he's important to me, and he's fine with me the way I am."

"That's good, too..." Ugh, what a horrible mother she was for thinking like that. Perhaps it just struck her strangely because it had been so long since there'd been a vital _male_ in his life. Not that she was helping the matter, either. And it wasn't like his damn therapist was very encouraging—

"Mom...?"

"Hnm?"

"I had a really good birthday this year."

"I'm glad, sugar. Are you sure there's nothing you want...?"

"I'm positive."

"So...do you think your friend knows that I'm really sorry?"

"Yeah." Sora laughed lightly. "He does."

"Sora...?"

"What, Ma?"

"I love you so much, no matter what."

* * *

Christmas snuck up on them. The weather got colder, wetter, and all-around grimier. School was released for a two-week break and Riku spent the rather uneventful majority of it at Sora's house. Kairi convinced both of them to go to the mall with her a few days before the holiday, insisting they buy gifts for each other together but without sneaking peeks. Tidus invited Riku to his family's Christmas party on the twenty-fourth, and Riku obliged because that meant the blond was no longer mad at him. He left at eight but didn't go back to his house; instead, he asked for a ride to Sora's, where they spent the rest of the night together. Sora's mother had been unfortunately scheduled to work Christmas Eve so after an early exchange of gifts—revealing that Sora had bought Riku a leather wrist-strap and a tiny Hallmark book with pages and pages of black-and-white photos in it, bound together with a warm, singular theme echoed by each image and the quotes beneath them, and that Riku had gotten Sora a box of Swedish Fish and a hardback journal, a slip of paper inside reading _So you won't forget anything – Riku_—they settled onto the couch and celebrated the holiday with some cuddling and laughing and hand-holding.

He left at a quarter to eleven but the buses weren't running near Fallridge so he ended up having to walk; by the time he made it back into his cul-de-sac, Riku was freezing and pissed and even more so when he found his front door locked. His father answered the door with a more than frightening expression of disapproval, and there was no _or-else_. There was instead a simple punishment—_To your room NOW and you're not allowed out of this goddamn house without permission until the end of Christmas break_.

And in the housing complex Riku had left about thirty minutes before, Sora locked the front door and shut himself into his mom's room, the television on and his new journal sitting beside him. He'd left a note on the table for his mother to tell her he hoped she'd had a good night, that it was now officially Christmas (by the time she got home, that is) and a merry one at that, and that he was sleeping in her room and she could wake him up if need be. But here he was sprawled on her mattress with the blanket around his shoulders like a cloak, the journal opened in front of him but still blank because he had no idea what to write. _Dear diary, my name is Sora and you were a present from my boyfriend._ Well, if that wasn't typical. _Dear diary, today is December 24 and I might become somebody else as soon as tomorrow. _That sounded better, if rather pessimistic.

He'd had such a run of good luck lately. A great school-year, a great group of friends, a great birthday, a great Christmas. So far. Maybe that was a bad sign.

Christmas of three years ago had been very different. Very, very different. Four years ago he'd just turned eleven and then _his father_ had happened, and three years ago he'd just turned twelve and _everything_ was happening—

* * *

"_No, no, no—!"_

"_Sora, honey, baby, sugar, please stop crying."_

"_NO NO NO!"_

"_Sora, cut it out right now! Please, baby, please!" _

"_I won't let them touch me, Momma! I won't let anyone, not even you!" _

"_Sugar...they're doctors. You can trust them. It's like a check-up." _

"_No it's not, it's not a check-up at all, they just wanna know if that son of a bitch hurt me BAD or not." _

"_You'd better _watch your language, _Sora_—"

"_I just wanna go home, I just wanna go home, I wanna go hoooome!"_

"_Do it for me, baby, please?" _

"_I-I... I don't wanna look at them when they do it, okay?" _

"_Okay, okay, shh... Stop your crying..." _

* * *

"_Mom?" _

"_What is it?" _

"_Why'd he do it?_"

* * *

"_Dissociative identity disorder."_

"_You're kidding me...right?" _

"_No, I'm not. It's very common in his case, actually—"_

"_So you're saying that's not my son?" _

"_He's your son, but at this point in time an alter has taken control." _

"_What's an alter?" _

"_Something that's not real."_

* * *

"_I'm... I'm real, though. I'm real, Mom." _

"_Hell no, you're not." _

"_I... Mom...?" _

"_You're not Sora."_

"_Of course I'm not, I'm Roxas!" _

"_And you're not my son." _

"_Mom—Momma, I... I'm not a phony. I'm REAL." _

"_You're a defense mechanism."_

"_And you're a drunk!"_

"_Excuse me?"_

"_You're a lousy, good-for-nothing drunk who doesn't even have the self-esteem to get a better job than a waitress or a dancer, and you're drinking right now and that's the only reason you think I'm not real! I'm REAL!" _

"_For your information, I'm drinking because I'm UPSET." _

"_I'm running away! I'm leaving! I'm running away to a family that cares if I'm real! You're crazy!" _

"_Honey, you have nowhere to go." _

"_I don't know what's going on. You're scaring me_—_" _

"_Oh, honey, please don't cry like that. Don't...hey..." _

"_Say my name, Momma. Say my name." _

"_Sweetie, your hair looks so cute to the side like that."_

"_Say it, Mommy, please_—_" _

"..._Roxas."_

* * *

"_You're who?" _

"_Roxas. My mom says that I know you, but I don't think I do."_

"_You know me..." _

"_Your name's Kairi, right?"_

"_Um, yes. Why don't you remember me?"_

"_The therapist says I have blackouts because of a traumatic experience and my mom won't tell me what it was."_

"_Oh."_

"_...Don't tell anyone I said this, okay?" _

"_Okay."_

"_The other night I upset her so much she started drinking and then she told me I wasn't real."_

"_She's not usually like that. She loves you."_

"_Hah. Yeah, okay." _

* * *

"_Mom, what the heck is going on?" _

"_What are you—"_

"_MOM. What day is it?" _

"_It's— ...Sora?"_

"_Who else, Mom? What DAY is it?" _

"_Wednesday. October 3rd."_

"_WHAT? Momma, it was just the beginning of September yesterday!" _

"_Sugar, we need to talk." _

"_About what?"_

"_About Roxas."_

* * *

"_Hey, nice hair."_

"_Hunh?"_

"_Hahah! So are you back from the land of make-believe now, or what?" _

"_...I..."_

"_Maybe you should be an actor."_

"_Or maybe he should just grow up, hahah!" _

"_What are you guys talking about?" _

"_You want some hair gel, man?" _

"_Shut up." _

"_Mr. Kato, he's gonna start a fight again!" _

"_Shut up!" _

"_Schizo."_

"_Mental patient, hahaha!" _

"_SHUT UP! All of you, SHUT UP!" _

"_Hahahah—"_

"_Mr. Kato! Mr. Kato! They're fighting again!" _

"_Wow, he really means it—"_

"_They hit my desk!"_

"_Holy cow!" _

"_Break it up, boys! BREAK IT UP!" _

"_Psychotic freak!" _

"_Asshole!" _

"_Alright, both of you—let's go! To the office, NOW." _

* * *

"_Sora...it's just a suspension."_

"_...I know, but—"_

"_It's okay."_

"_It's NOT! It's NOT okay!"_

"_Sora—"_

"_This...this really sucks."_

* * *

"_It's gotten so bad that he fades in and out on a weekly basis. I don't know what to do, Val. I just... Oh, he's waking up_—_sugar? Sora, honey? Hey, you know who I am?" _

"_...Mm, you're my mom." _

"_Yeah... Yeah."_

"_Why are you crying? What did I do?" _

"_Sora, don't you know where you are?"_

"_Of course I do. The hospital. ...Why is Aunt Val here?" _

"_...Because I... I needed support."_

"_I'm sorry, Momma."_

"_Oh my God, you're going to have to prove that to me, baby." _

* * *

"_Kairi...?"_

"_Just hold on. I need a minute before I can even stand to look at you again, Sora."_

"_What did I do? Hunh? Why are you and my mom treating me so nasty?" _

"_Sora, you tried to _hurt_ yourself!" _

"_...Well, it didn't work."_

"_You were in the _hospital_!" _

"_Kairi, I'm okay, though. I'm back home."_

"_But you don't get it. You scared me. You scared your poor mother. You're all she has."_

"_I have a new therapist. His name is Dr. Ling. The hospital told my mom he might be really good."_

"_Well I'm glad because if you _ever _do that again, I will kick your ass. You hear me, Sora?"_

"..._" _

"_Sora, come on, don't clam up on me now. We just can't stand to lose you." _

* * *

"_My name is _Roxas."

* * *

"_Do you like the sound of the waves, Sora? It's calming, right? Here, I have a tape. Close your eyes and listen and _relax_. And when you wake up, the session will be over and you can get ice cream with your mom." _

* * *

"_NO! I'm ROXAS!"_

"_You're CRAZY is what you are!" _

"_Shut up, blockhead, or I'll give you a black eye—" _

* * *

"_I know what I'll do. I'll mark the calendar every night before I go to bed, and that way I'll know which days I'm conscious."_

"_Good idea, Rox." _

* * *

"_I think they're getting bored with it. They're stupid seventh-graders and that's all they are. They're bored with me now. I'm not the class joke anymore, and everyone knows by now that I'll make them shut up and they'll get in some huge trouble, but other than that I think everyone's just gotten over it. In fact, I don't really think they understood the concept to begin with. They just wanted to look cool and popular and when they heard about Roxas, they thought, 'Cool, let's rag on this guy for a while because we're dumb and we have to rely on rumor and ignorance to have a reputation'. That's what I think. Things are really... Eighth grade will be better. I know it will be." _

* * *

His lashes fluttered a few times, his fingers twitching on the pencil beneath them. The television was on, unintelligible noises that dipped in and out, ebbing and flowing like waves. Beneath his nose was a pillow that smelled like coconut shampoo and cigarettes, and around his shoulders was the goose-down comforter he loved so much; lifting his head, he pawed at his eyes weakly, blinking as the world fell back into focus. He didn't remember coming in here. He'd been in _his_ room, and...

The TV program flickering from across the room was _The Cosby Show_. God, that must mean it was somewhere around two in the morning. He looked down at the notebook that had been beneath his hand, and his eyes caught sleepily on the piece of paper resting innocently beside the pencil.

_So you won't forget anything – Riku_

Chills zipped down his spine. What...what was _that_ supposed to mean? And when in the world had he given him that?

Roxas sat up slowly, confusion overriding the sleep in his eyes and he clutched the blanket to keep it around his shoulders. Was his mom still not home? That worried him. Swinging his legs off the side of the mattress, he slid to the ground and padded out of the bedroom, down the hall, the feather blanket trailing behind him like a cape of royalty.

He halted at the mouth of the hallway and his stomach dropped. Clammy shivers pricked at his skin, up and down his spine.

The Christmas tree—the _Christmas_ tree?!

Roxas attempted swallowing again but his throat was suddenly tight and raw. His hands shook; his brows knotted. Christmas-time. It was fucking Christmas-time. That must mean that it had been a month, or even over a month—

He almost tripped on the blanket as he spun on his heel and dashed down the hallway into his bedroom. He ripped through it, the blanket-cloak pulling things after it and leaving them stranded elsewhere in the room; the bed creaked as he hopped onto it, scrambling for the calendar above his bed.

Over a month and a half.

He'd been out for over a month and a half.

Telephone—he needed the telephone. Feather-blanket quilt trailing after him still, Roxas pounded down the hall again and through the living room, to the kitchen where the phone sat guilelessly in its cradle. He snatched the receiver and stumbled back into his room, back to his bed where beside the calendar he'd put up that important phone number. And only after he'd dialed and was waiting for someone to pick up—because seriously, if someone was calling at two AM, it was clearly urgent—did he realize that he didn't know what to say if the line opened and it wasn't who he expected.

He didn't have to worry though, because after three rings Riku answered, sounding utterly fogged over with sleep: "...Hello?"

His heart pummeled the inside of his chest. He felt sick. He felt like crying, but he wouldn't let that happen. Crying was stupid and didn't help at all. Instead he sort of wanted to scream. "Riku?"

"Ah—yeah?"

"It's Roxas. I just... I..." He choked up. He cleared his throat, blinked rapidly. "I'm really... I'm not okay. Will you talk to me for a little bit? Just for a while..."

* * *

**A/N: We're back in business. Sorry for the delay. Sometimes life can get really busy, you know? My apologies for the length and any dragging at all; please excuse sloppiness, if any. Reviews/critique always encouraged. :D**


	14. In the Wake

_**Candy Boy**_

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the amazing franchise © Disney and Square Enix; everything else © their rightful owners.**

**Ratings/Warnings: M—profanity, graphic themes, AU**

* * *

_Chapter Fourteen_

* * *

Riku took a slow breath and let it out in a heavy sigh, and as he tried to avoid swallowing some tawny spikes of hair in doing so, he thought that he really had no right to be surprised. In fact, he should have expected this to happen again. He'd _known_ it was going to happen again. He just hadn't wanted to think about it, and as a result wasn't very prepared for it. How irresponsible was that?

"I can't believe I just snuck out of my house," he muttered below his breath, and it was the only shock he was bold enough to voice. The others he kept locked away inside, knowing that they were totally and presently unacceptable, so Riku just tilted his head back and stared up at the Kaimana ceiling because it was three in the morning and no matter how tired he was, his eyes just wouldn't stay closed.

"I can," Roxas mumbled from where he was temporarily attached to Riku's shoulder, with the ever-present and gracefully dry sarcasm that had been absent for so long. "And did I forget to mention that I'm totally flattered and forever grateful?"

"I'm grounded, you know. Because I..." The truth was the only thing he could find at the moment; he was too stunned and too exhausted to really piece together anything evasive. "Because I literally just left this place and I got home really late, so now my dad is pretty pissed."

"Naturally."

"Actually, unnaturally."

"...Oh." Roxas was curled in a ball, his arms around his knees and his body propped warm and heavy against Riku's side. He wasn't hugging him; in fact, Riku's arm was draped about his shoulder in comfort but the boy had resorted to a fetal position that was as alarming as it was interesting. "What do you mean by 'unnaturally'?"

"Because he usually just threatens to punish me, but never follows through." Riku paused, running his free hand through his own hair, fisting it after gathering it all out of his face and then just letting go, letting it fall wherever and not caring how disheveled it would look when he lifted his head off the back of the couch. As blasé as he was keeping his voice, he really was quite concerned for his social existence should his father find out he'd left the house. In the wee hours of the morning, too. "Needless to say, I am pretty positive that if I get caught, I'll be in some _real _trouble."

"Sorry, Riku... I just really—"

"I know, I know. You need me. That's fine. I'm here." _And I'm sitting on your couch and I'm holding you and just five hours ago, this was essentially the same position I was in with Sora_.

Roxas drew a slow, steadying breath, his hands shifting to lace together atop his knees. He looked like a child in prayer, but it was more ethereal than cherubic. Riku frowned, lifted his head, felt the hair fall sloppily around his ears and frowned further as shivers zipped down his spine. Roxas hadn't styled his hair yet but it was poking every which way, making him the momentary poster child for bed-head—and a very familiar stranger halfway between Sora and Roxas. His lashes were lowered and he focused on his toes, which were curled against Riku's thigh, and as Riku's gaze sagged down to acknowledge them, Roxas wiggled them around and sighed again.

"I missed...so much, didn't I?"

"No." _Yes._

"God, I'm _so pissed_ right now. _So. Pissed_."

Riku began to run his hand up and down the boy's back, slinging his other arm over the back of the couch and propping his heels up on the coffee table. His slight movements caused Roxas to tip further into him and his nose hit his neck, buried there, and tentative and yet utterly authoritative fingers curled on his T-shirt just below the collar.

"Riku, the last thing I remember thinking about you is how afraid I was that you didn't like me."

Riku grunted. _Great_. "Roxas, I just snuck out of my goddamn house. I am putting my _ass_ on the line here and—"

"And I remember wondering how we met and how we got together, and how we spent the time I _couldn't _remember if that was how we spent the time I _could_ remember."

Riku lifted the hand that drifted along Roxas's side, pulling it down his face as if to swipe away the burdensome thoughts and make room for the pertinent ones. His wrist dusted the unruly tufts of hair beneath his chin and instead of returning his hand to where it had previously been, he simply let it drop to Roxas's skull where his fingers tangled into the mess of sweet-smelling layers. Roxas's knuckles twitched and he tightened his grip on his chest.

"I don't know where my mom is," he announced bluntly. Riku frowned deeply.

"So what will happen when she comes home and we're—"

"Riku, it's Christmas Eve. ...Well, Christmas day, now, I guess. Do you really think she'll be home before daybreak?"

"I...don't know. I have no idea what that means."

"Riku, have we kissed yet?"

God, he really _was_ having a hard time; Roxas only hopped subjects that randomly when he was seriously distraught. Riku sucked in a breath, silently, and rolled his eyes back up to the ceiling. Yeah, right. As if higher powers ever really helped him; his whole life, they pretty much just sat back and mocked. _Puny mortal, insignificant collection of water and carbon, pitiful little boy with the stressful life. Let's see how much he can handle._ That was the master plan for him, right?

Roxas lifted his head, peering at the boy he sat next to with forlorn, curious eyes, eyes that in the darkness of the early morning were piercingly blue, wounded and angry and lost and strikingly profound. And still surprisingly new, foreign, _not Sora's_. That made them intimidating to stare into, ever-deepening abysses that held more secrets than they gave away.

And, above all, he was waiting for an answer.

"No," Riku said tersely, and he had been struggling for which answer to give in the few seconds he'd been studying his eyes. If he said _Yes_, that would leave an opening for Roxas to kiss him, to go farther with this new right granted to him. And if he said _No_, that left open a wider alley for even more twisted misconceptions to be birthed. Unfortunately, a _No_ was what escaped him first, bewildered and brusque.

And all Roxas said was: "Wow."

Riku blinked, cocked a brow.

Roxas stared at him, his eyes suddenly brightening with that puckish gleam they had when he was feeling specially up to a battle of the wits. "Well...?"

Riku scowled. "'Well' what?"

"Well, when the hell are we going to?"

"Keep it up and it'll be never," he grunted, raking his fingernails through platinum strands of hair to get it back in his face. He wasn't trying to be mean, not with Roxas in his arm like that, but he couldn't shake that bitterness that Roxas evoked in him—that dark burning in his chest because Roxas had stolen away the one thing that meant the most to Riku and was trying his unintentional damndest to take his place.

But as Roxas gave him his patented stare of doom, something like shattered ice and stormy waters, Riku realized that he was being unnecessarily unfair to the poor kid. _Especially_ with Roxas in his arm like that, with Roxas owning a place somewhere in his heart between _People I Like_ and _People I Hate_, with Roxas sitting half on his lap and half on the couch with his hands folded atop his knees and his toes warming up beneath his upper thigh, glaring at him and glaring at him until Riku had to relax, had to smile, had to shake his head and chuckle a bit. Without extra effort, even.

Roxas's glower dissipated after watching Riku soften up a bit, fading into the corners of his face where it waited until it could flood like electricity back into those bright eyes and another few seconds passed before Roxas began to tilt forward again, settling into the nook of Riku's arm again.

"You are one angry person," Riku informed him.

"So?"

"Pent-up anger is bad for the heart."

"Like you have any right to be lecturing me."

"I don't keep it inside, though. I _openly_ demonstrate it."

"I know you do. I hate it so much."

"And yet...you're my boyfriend."

Woah. Wait a sec. _You're my boyfriend_ had been _way_ too easy to toss out there. Even if it wasn't as true as it would have been had he said it to Sora.

...Oh, God, he was warming up to Roxas.

Somewhere deep in the back of his mind where the important stuff, the sentimental stuff, the stuff that really mattered to him, where all of that was stored in a little corner of sounds and sights and smells, a voice perforated his pretense (his mental one wasn't as strong as his physical one) and it sing-songed, _...you're in love with Sora, you've gotta love Roxas, too._

Roxas sighed heavily, dropping one leg and then the other, his hands falling to his lap. "If my mom gets home in the next hour, she can take you home."

"It's fine. I walked over here."

"That's so dangerous, though—"

"In my opinion, it'll be more dangerous for her to drive me because the car may wake up my parents."

"...Yeah. Sure."

"Are you going to be okay if I go?"

"Ah... Yeah. Yeah, I will be. I'm sorry I—"

"Quit apologizing. It was my decision to come over here."

"I really appreciate it." Roxas ran a hand over his temple, up into his messy hair where his fingers hooked anxiously within the locks. "I can't believe it's been so long..."

"I could imagine."

"Could you?" He frowned, peering at Riku through his lashes. "Could you, really? Imagine how scary it is, I mean."

Riku stared at him for a long moment, lips drawn in a thin line and lashes lowered on stony eyes. Leave it to Roxas to turn sympathy into a judgement. "I could try," he muttered.

Roxas sighed again, inched a little further away from the other boy, as if embarrassed to have needed his comfort in such a paternal way. "Call me tomorrow. Or...when you get home so I know you're alright," he grumbled, head tilted to the side.

Riku couldn't help it; the return of Roxas's typically contradictory attitude was amusing. He smiled crookedly, almost rolled his eyes but decided against it. "Sure thing, Roxas," he replied as he stood up, the hand resting near Roxas's side drifting up his back and through his hair before finding its place in Riku's hip pocket. And before he fully comprehended it, he reached out with the other hand and gave Roxas's nose a little flick, grunting, "Hang in there for a little bit, okay?"

Roxas gawked up at him and Riku stared back, brows risen, because he was completely unaware that the boy sitting on the couch with his eyes locked on him and his mouth hanging gently slack was only astonished because Riku seemed to be so comfortable around him, so much more _warm_ than he had been the last time he'd seen him, and he didn't quiet know what to do with that. It upset him a little that he'd missed that change, surprised him a little more that it had happened, and soothed him more than anything because it had.

"Yeah," he managed, standing up beside the boy with the silver hair and the gray denim jacket, and cleared his throat before turning up the corners of his mouth in a meek little smile. "I will."

"I'll call when I get home," Riku obliged in a heavy sigh, heading to the door with Roxas on his heels. He was just walking home, but if it would appease the younger boy to give him a ring as proof that he was safe at home, that was fine. He could understand where he was coming from, city streets in the dark and all. "Night, Roxas."

Roxas stood on the carpet and Riku stood on the tile of the entryway; they stayed like that, stationary in the darkness for a wavering moment and in it, Riku could feel that Roxas was waiting for something. A hug, a kiss, maybe different words? But no, Riku wasn't at that point just yet. A flick on the nose was the best he could do without his heart falling to the pit of his gut.

Roxas shifted his weight to the other foot and only then did Riku notice one of his hands still fisted in his hair, neurotically pulling it all to the right—or maybe just in hopes that it staying styled in the rather gravity-defying state it had after lifting from his pillow. Riku sighed, reached behind him and grasped the doorknob. "Good night," he said again, and gave him a smile over the shoulder as he ducked out into the lobby and headed for the front doors.

* * *

"Mom...?"

Mrs. Kaimana blinked a few times, as if to clear her vision of the delusion her sleep-deprived mind was playing at her. It was nearing four in the morning and she stood in the living room with her bag slowly slipping off her shoulder and her feet throbbing within her shoes, but what she saw wasn't a hallucination from lack of sleep. And it solidified its reality by speaking again:

"Mom..."

"What's the matter?"

Something was wrong. Something was different. The fatigued cogs in her mind worked to process the information her tired eyes were giving her—across the living room, at the mouth of the hall, her son stood with a similar look of total exhaustion on his face but something was _different_. His eyes were big and dark, his shoulders were hunched, his hair was mussed up and in his eyes as layers of it snuck out to the right, and his flannel pajama pants and T-shirt looked gently—but not comfortably—slept-in.

Her gaze fluttered back up to his face, back down to his bare feet, and as it trailed the length of his flannel-clad legs, it hit her.

"Oh, sweetie," Yuuko breathed out, her shoulders drooping and her purse sliding off her shoulder. She dug her elbow into her side to catch it there, then just let it slip to her wrist; she dropped it to the carpet, fingers hanging limply near her thigh. "...Are you okay?"

"Yeah." Roxas blinked at her from across the room, looking her up and down just as she had with him. "Are you? It's four o'clock."

"I'm a little tired."

"Do you want some coffee?"

"I'll fall asleep before I can finish it."

Roxas fidgeted a bit, fumbling with the lip of his hip pocket, then stepped forward and shuffled through the room, into the kitchen. She was looking at him weird again; he could feel her eyes following him as he moved to the stove and flipped on its overhead, then grabbed a mug out of the cabinet and reached for the coffee maker. He didn't want to return her stare though; it always made him feel like a stranger. Like she didn't know what to do with him. Then again, his gaze was probably just as guarded.

"Roxas..." He heard his mother taking off her shoes, laying her things on the black easy-chair by the front door. She sounded as though she were afraid of saying his name. "What are you doing up?"

He tossed hair from his eyes and pressed the Start button on the coffee machine, watching as the brew began to drip down into the pot; leaning against the counter, he couldn't help but frown. He cleared his throat, lashes lowered. "I couldn't sleep."

"Why, honey?" She was walking into the kitchen now; he almost expected her to touch his back, stroke it in comfort, but she didn't. She leaned against the opposite counter and crossed her arms, as if she found it hard to stay awake.

"Because I woke up on your bed and the last thing I remember is November."

"Oh... Roxas..."

Roxas's frown twitched, then deepened into a poignant scowl. She sounded sympathetic, but not at all comforting. Sympathetic and almost _bored_, as though such a confession were worn-out by now. His stomach flopped, throat tightened; his fingertips curled on the edge of the counter and he wished Riku hadn't gone right to sleep. He wished they could have talked on the phone a bit longer, just to avoid this situation for the time being.

"So, Mom..." He reached out and tapped the glass of the coffee pot, supposing there was enough there now to fill half a mug. "...You were out really late tonight."

"God, I know."

"Well...?" Roxas chanced a glance over his shoulder, and his open-ended _Well_ reminded him of Riku and Riku's returned _Well, what?_ so he continued before she could make the same remark; a reply of _Well, what? _seemed so incredibly unnecessary, because the person in question always knew what the _Well _was for, anyway, but just didn't want to admit it. "Well, how much money did you make tonight?"

Yuuko was quiet for a long moment, staring across the kitchen at her son with her arms crossed and her face blank. The coffee machine clicked and whirred a few times before she broke the silence of their stare-down: "That's none of your business."

"It kind of is—"

"No, _Roxas_, it's not. It's _my _job, so it's _my_ business."

The corners of Roxas's mouth sharpened and his eyes narrowed; his accosting gaze remained on her even as he shrank into the counter, folding his arms in a position mirroring hers. "Yeah, it's _your_ job...for _your _family, and _your_ family happens to be _me_, so doesn't that make it my business, too?"

"Roxas, I don't care if it's four in the morning and you're tired but drop your atti—"

"Mom?"

"Drop your attitude and just go to bed for Christ's sake. It's Christmas—"

"_Mom_."

"_Alright_, Roxas, _alright_." Yuuko threw her hands in the air, an expression curdling her face somewhere between a grimace and a glare, though her eyes held all the intensity her visage couldn't. "I made a ton! It was a great night! Lots of people requested and there were probably two dozen new clients. I worked pretty hard and it was sure as hell enjoyed, so it was a _great _night. Are you satisfied? Are you?"

Roxas turned to the coffee pot and poured the contents into the mug. The brew continued dripping, hissing as it hit the hot plate beneath; he replaced the pot quickly and reached into the cabinet above his head for his mother's creamer and the sugar, and, after mixing it up, he tossed the spoon clattering into the basin of the sink and swept out of the kitchen with a mumble of, "Merry Christmas."

"Yeah," Mrs. Kaimana edged out beneath her breath. "Yeah, Merry Christmas, sweetie."

* * *

He'd left through the back door and made sure to leave it unlocked when he did, determined not to be stranded outside like earlier now that everyone was asleep. By the time he circled the side of the house and—peeking over his shoulder every few seconds just because it was the wee hours of the morning and still very dark and he could be a scaredy-cat, too, under those circumstances—slipped in through the kitchen door, Riku was physically tired, emotionally tired, and really cold all over again.

He stumbled through the living room as swiftly and quietly as possible, easy in the dark as his eyes were adjusted relatively well after walking home in it a second time, and he dropped his jacket on his desk chair as he closed his bedroom door on the empty hallway. His eyes were heavy as he untied his Converse and dialed the Kaimana number but his head was even heavier, his chest heaviest of all, and by the time he'd assured Roxas he was in his bedroom and flopping down onto his bed, it took the last of his energy to wriggle beneath the blankets, give the boy on the other line a thousand I'm-Fine-You're-Fine-We're-Fine-It's-Fine-I'll-Call-Tomorrow-Good-Nights, hang up, drop the phone to the floor, and shove his face into the pillow.

_What a beautiful Christmas. Gray and grimy and full of surprises_, he thought, and after that he considered that if he wasn't so fucking tired, he might have had to fight a tear or two. Or at least the urge to shed them.

Beneath the pillow his arms were folded, nose buried in the cool fabric of his pillowcase and the blanket halfway up his head, a warm cocoon of light cotton quilt. And Riku fell asleep without getting undressed, but even if he had, he wouldn't have taken off the leather strap around his left wrist.

* * *

"Sooo... What did you get, Kairi?" A mystery-flavored sucker clicked against Selphie's teeth as she spoke, brows risen and cheek propped in her palm. It was the noisiest Monday lunch period of the year, the first day after Christmas break, the first day of a new semester, the first day of a new year. And yet, despite all that good cheer and energy, their table was still relatively empty and just as quiet as always.

"Umm..." Kairi tapped her chin, fiddling with the wire of her notebook; it was coming undone near the top. "I got some gift cards. Target, Hollister, Barnes 'N Noble."

Selphie gasped with all the despair a teenage victim of Christmas could hold. "No fair! You got Hollister? I got _Pac Sun_. Wanna switch?"

"Sure. Pac Sun is cool, too."

Riku's tray clacked against the table as he set it down, following onto the bench. His eyes scanned the rest of the table for signs of any other lunches, but his was the only one; the boy sitting opposite him didn't even have a drink to sip. Ham-and-cheese sandwich and carton of milk for one, please.

Roxas sat slumped into his arms, eyes trained listlessly on Riku's lunch. He was somewhere within a mess of hair and an old gray sweater, a size too big and looking more like his father should have worn it—and in his freshman year of college, to boot. Riku opened his milk, raising his brows at the brooding boy across from him; the left sleeve of the baggy cardigan had caught on the upper hem of a recognizable checkered wristband, proving it was indeed still there after a full week.

"You're not eating?" Riku asked, unwrapping his sandwich with a neatness that was not particularly on purpose.

"No," Roxas replied, eyes shifting up from Riku's food to his face.

"Why not?"

"Not hungry."

"As expected."

"I had an apple danish this morning."

"Lunch is still important."

"True..." Roxas reached across the table and took Riku's straw, plucking at the end of the wrapper and pulling it out, crumpling the paper while he carefully held the plastic straw high above the surface of the table. His eyes met Riku's and held them in a stare, taciturn but with traces of his naturally Roxas wit. "But breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and even if I don't eat lunch, at least I ate breakfast."

Riku's lips twitched at the corners, wanting to pull into a grin but pinned firmly in place by his bitter will. Two could play at that game—as their conversations always started out—and he leaned forward, taking the straw from Roxas and casting a look of superior intelligence down his nose. "That's definitely true, but the _most important_ thing of _every meal_ is to make sure it's balanced nutritionally. And the last I was aware of, an apple danish isn't exactly a dietitian's dream."

Roxas opened his mouth to retort, and that was when Riku allowed his smirk to begin tugging his cheeks up, continuing before the younger boy could get a word out:

"Especially if you bought it at the 7-11 down the road."

Roxas again tried to butt in, and Riku once more cut him off successfully, now grinning crookedly:

"Or a café. They may be health-conscious, but a bakery or a donut shop probably won't meet FDA standards."

"Oh, God, drop out and just start lecturing already!" Roxas threw the straw wrapper he still had in his palm at the boy with the silver hair and it bounced off his cheek, landing in his lap. Riku chuckled, brushing it off, and as he reached for his milk to open it up, he caught Kairi's curious stare and immediately met it head-on.

She looked to Roxas once, and then quickly back to him with a knowing little gleam in her eye and a half-smile tipping up in full, glossy grandeur. Riku's momentary mirth sharpened into a curt frown and he shoved the straw into his newly opened milk, preferring to think that Kairi was just spacing off and not silently commending him for what he _knew_ she would commend him for—_Good for you, Riku, you're bonding with Roxas! _

Well.

She could just kiss his ass.

* * *

Roxas was unusually moody. He knew it just as well as Kairi knew it, and he had a feeling Riku knew it just as well as they knew it, too. Selphie knew it, but Selphie knew she annoyed him at times so she carefully stayed on her side of the line when he was moody. She wasn't stupid.

But everyone in the hallway was stupid.

Everyone in the hallway didn't care if he was in an exceptionally bad mood this particular Monday, or if he wasn't. And so Roxas tried not to care about them and their covert glances as he swapped books and reminded himself that he was probably just being incredibly self-conscious.

"Are you sure you don't want these?"

"I'm sure." Roxas offered Kairi the kindest smile he could muster, pushing the bag of Bugles back into her bag. "Seriously, I just don't have an appetite right now."

"I know..."

He sighed, swinging his locker shut and hoisting his backpack up to hook on both shoulders, running a hand through his hair and only succeeding in making it poke out further. Kairi gave him a succinct smile, chewing some of her chips and closing her own locker.

"Bugles," she proclaimed, giving him a troublemaker's smile that only looked that angelic on a pretty face, "are my favorite snack during seventh period."

"I thought you didn't eat anything but dinner," he scoffed below his breath, smiling dimly and tipping a wave in her direction.

"Shut up." Kairi laughed, throwing her little backpack up onto her left shoulder and straightening out her shirt, reaffixing it along her frame. "Run along now, little boy, and don't be late for class again."

Roxas rolled his eyes, but allowed his smile its right to break across his face in a soft grin. "See you later, Kairi."

Kairi nodded and waved as she threaded into the hallway traffic and Roxas drifted through the flow to the corner near the broken water fountain, and as he turned it, he let his shoulder dip out to the side and nudge the chest of a silver-haired sophomore who had been waiting patiently against the wall there.

"Walk with me."

"Yeah."

Riku glanced at him from below his lashes, shoulder just inches away from the other boy's and shifting ever closer with each step he took. Roxas looked completely petulant, utterly despondent, and perfectly Roxas with his carefully styled hair, gray sweater, faded blue jeans and black Converse. And the checkered wristband. Couldn't overlook that detail, not anymore than he could overlook the difference of that ice-blue from a similar cobalt.

Roxas looked miserable. His face was set in a frown that wavered on the verge of a grimace and he walked with his shoulders pinched and his head slightly bowed. Riku felt the corners of his mouth turn down and he swayed to the side, shoulder knocking into Roxas's. He grunted, staggered a few steps, then cast the older boy a dark glance.

Riku shrugged.

Roxas rolled his shoulders as if Riku had actually altered the way his sweater fell on his thin shoulders. "My class is right up here. Do you know that, or...?"

"Yeah, I know. What's your problem, hnm?"

"Nothing."

"Look, I'm pretty sure I know you well enough by now to know when something is up."

"You'd think that." Roxas smiled thinly, lashes falling to half-mast and giving the expression a rather morbid feel. Riku sighed in exasperation, pushing hair from his eyes with his knuckles.

"Roxas..."

The boy with the hair spiked to the right grunted as Riku stretched out his arm, stopping him in his tracks and then guiding him up against the wall. He turned skeptical blue eyes on him, wondering just what had come over the normally blunt and distanced Riku.

"PDA?" Roxas murmured, and despite the wry lilt of his voice, his visage betrayed the facade with its cloud of utter surprise.

"No. Definitely not."

"Then what the hell?" Roxas frowned sharply and pushed Riku's arm away, holding his hands out in question.

"Are you mad at me?"

Roxas's brows rose and for a moment he realized he'd forgotten why he was in a bad mood in the first place. Gawking at the other boy, he instead wondered if he was really giving off those vibes; and if he was, then great, there went his first relationship because he was always in a bad mood. Wasn't that how the typical high school break-up went? Laced with misunderstandings and lack of connection, to name just a few of the problems.

But he remembered thereafter why he was so upset and then he frowned again, wary of the reaction to his next words. "Will you hold my hand?"

Riku blinked, taken aback enough to lean a few inches away. "Hunh?"

Roxas held his hand out, palm up, and he frowned but it came across more lonely than demanding.

Riku stared at his open hand for a long moment, lips parted and an incredulous frown creasing his brow as he evaluated the situation and tried desperately to come up with the best option available. Because, really, there was _so much_ at stake by holding Roxas's hand as they walked to his next class. And the stares, the consequences, the risk, the _difference_—

Nearly everyone had made it to their next classes, leaving only the handfuls that called the hallways their home and tardies their friends, and joining the regulars today were the two standing near the wall as Riku slapped his hand onto Roxas's and turned on his heel. He clutched the younger boy's fingers tightly, already knowing how warm and soft they were, although they didn't fit as snugly as they would have had they been technically Sora's at that moment. As he resumed walking, Roxas gasped, truly startled by the brusqueness, but he stumbled along all the same.

The halls were relatively empty, leaving them isolated but not completely alone, yet the other students they passed indeed glanced a few times. Some even did a double-take or two, but it was nothing hateful and nothing unexpected. They stopped outside of Roxas's history class just seconds after the bell rang, and they stood there in the threshold, the door closed and the hall vacant around them, with fingers laced and clasped hands hidden between them. Roxas stared at the ground as if ashamed; Riku glanced at him from below his lashes and behind a lock of silver hair with a faintly resemblant look of guilt in his eyes. Roxas would never understand it. Riku gave his hand a quick squeeze before pulling it away and somewhere beyond his hunched shoulder, Roxas smiled and pushed forth to open the door to his classroom, the late slip with his name on it meaning nothing to him.

Riku decided another tardy wouldn't hurt him either; instead, what was on his mind was the fact that he had changed. He had _changed_ and he didn't know when it had happened. It had been subtle, that was for sure; subtle like Sora's emotional earthquakes but it had happened inside of _him_ this time and he hadn't been aware of it until now.

Culpably, he thought that if it had been Sora—not Roxas, but _Sora_—he wouldn't have been rash enough to hold his hand from one end of the school to the other. That was pathetic. He could meet him on the second floor for a secret game of tonsil hockey, he could grind into him on his bathroom floor, but he couldn't hold his hand where everyone could see it? Completely, undeniably, pathetic. It felt almost as though he'd wronged Sora, but in a sense it felt like he'd have wronged Roxas if he hadn't complied to holding his hand.

God, this was too complicated.

When Sora came back, he'd definitely hold his hand in the hallway.

* * *

On Tuesday, he almost got into a fight. It was after school, in the entrance hallway, and if Riku hadn't been there he probably would have hooked the idiot in the nose—and then he would have promptly gotten in trouble, because they were right in front of the office.

He came down the stairs from the second floor with a blond boy in a Zanarkand cap at his side, and they seemed to be pretty intent in the conversation they were holding (although it looked more argumentative than anything else) until his eyes met Roxas's. In a split-second, Riku's attention realigned and he assessed the situation with words still dying off at his lips.

And as Roxas looked away from the stairwell and back to the boy glowering in his direction, opened his mouth and barked out something or another in his defense, Riku made it his priority to get from Tidus's side to Roxas's in a matter of three seconds—three seconds because that was all the time he allowed the belligerent kid before he did something stupid. If he recalled correctly, the altercation on the second floor with Tov and Reed had been intensified by Roxas doing something stupid. Like shoving the guy across the hall.

"Roxas—"

Roxas shrugged his hand off as soon as it landed on his shoulder. Riku rose his brows, surprised, and he and Roxas's foe exchanged a glance or two of some kind of understanding.

"Roxas," he tried again, scowling now at the boy's brisk dismissal of his touch. He could hear Tidus somewhere in their surroundings, despite their terms not exactly being back to _good_ yet, hollering at people to _Get moving because there's nothing cool to see_.

They weren't a blatant obstacle to the throngs of students; instead, they were near a corner, where the entryway opened to a wide passage that became two other hallways, the doors to the cafeteria, the doors to the gym, and the front staircase. The corner was diagonally opposite the front office, and the majority of the crowd spilling out of the school was oblivious to the pocket of tension at the edge of the corridor—while the ones that did notice and decided to pay attention were being assaulted by a Zanarkand Abes cap, brandished by a blond in a denim jacket and a Foo Fighters T-shirt.

Riku grabbed Roxas's upper arm and tugged him back, far enough for the right half of his body to brush along Riku's left. He felt his bicep, bare and sunkissed between the hem of his sleeve and his elbow, and it was lean and ropy and tensed beneath Riku's arm as he tried to pull away.

"He was in my _way_," Roxas cried, the look on his face incredibly hostile. Riku grunted, tightening his grip and keeping the boy from breaking away.

"Dude, get over it. Walk another way or something," the alleged perpetrator mumbled, readjusting the straps of his backpack. He was about the same size as Roxas, maybe a bit taller and quite lanky for being that small, with gelled-up hair and a pinched scowl that was more tempting than promising.

Roxas guffawed, seemingly indifferent to the hand still clutching his upper arm like a carefully placed cuff. "You refused to move! You just sat there and stared at me and said 'I'm not moving, jackass'!"

"I was busy doing something—"

"You stood in my way on purpose."

"You know what? This is stupid. You're throwing a big fat fucking fit for nothing and it's wasting my time."

Roxas and the other student both looked to Riku as if seeking his opinion on this analysis of their argument, and Riku realized then that the poor kid who was the victim of Roxas's tantrums was clearly a freshman. That made two of them. And he, being a sophomore (and the taller of the three, and the stronger of the three, and the one with the sturdiest reputation out of the three), had been chosen as mediator even if he didn't consent. Blinking, totally astounded that he'd found himself in this situation in the first place, he opened his mouth but didn't really know what to say. He knew Roxas was overreacting, but if he chose the other kid's side he'd get hell from Roxas until God knew when. So all he managed to edge out was, "_Roxas_..." before the other student got fed up with the duo in front of him and let out a loud growl of exasperation.

"Whatever! This is so retarded! It's _your turn_ to move it, man." And with that, he held his chin up, grabbed the straps of his backpack, and shoved past Roxas and redirected his course towards the open doors. Roxas jerked as if he wanted to start after him but Riku kept his grip firm; Roxas whipped a thoroughly enraged scowl upon the older boy and hissed:

"Thanks for your _help_!"

"Forget it. That was entirely ridiculous."

"You don't even know what happened!"

"Roxas, not everyone is picking on you all the time."

"Uh, Riku?" Tidus shoved the Zanarkand baseball cap on his head, backwards, shocks of golden-blond hair poking out just above his forehead. "I'm gonna miss my bus if I don't leave now. We'll talk some other time, 'kay?"

"Yeah. Sure. Thanks."

Tidus gave a mock salute, but his eyes weren't as jovial as they should have been as he hurried out of the school and left Riku at the corner with a stern hold on Roxas's arm, Roxas standing far enough away to look as though his arm was at an awkward angle, head hung and glare settled on everyone who passed.

"Roxas—"

"What?"

"Calm down."

Roxas spun on his heel, only succeeding in jerking himself even closer to the silver-haired boy, the movement feeling something like a distraught tango. He glowered, jaw jutting out defiantly. "I'm calm," he murmured.

"Mm, really? I couldn't tell."

"I will be as soon as you let go."

"Mn-hnm. Do you have therapy today?"

"No. Thursday."

"Do you want me to come over?"

"How good are you at chemistry?"

"I'm in chemistry. ...And I thought freshmen did biology, not chemistry."

"We're learning the basics of atoms. Are you good at it, or what?"

"Actually, very."

"Then yes, I want you to come over."

Riku let go of Roxas's arm and like they really were a part of some well-rehearsed dance—the distraught tango getting a bit looser, calmer—Roxas shifted away and smoothed down his sleeve, his shirt, moved his backpack strap higher on his shoulder. He cast Riku another irritated glimpse from beneath his lashes, then pivoted on the heel of his black All-Stars and stormed out of the high school.

Riku sighed heavily, adjusted his own clothes to sit more comfortably on his shoulders, then slid a hand in his pocket and followed the spiky head that bobbed down the concrete stoop with a less than excited look beneath the silver of his hair.

* * *

The chemistry in the textbook was easy to explain.

The chemistry outside of it wasn't.

It had been tense enough by the time they got inside the Kaimana house; Riku had called his house and told his mother he was helping a friend with schoolwork, and Roxas had laid plaintively on his back with his feet propped up on the cushions of a black leather chair near the front door, his satchel bag strewn out beside him and his arms crossed and when Riku had hung up the phone he'd pointed to his backpack and said, "Book's in there."

They'd argued over who was getting the homework out of the bag (the stupidest argument Riku had ever had in his life, he insisted) for about five minutes, Roxas lying on the floor with a stubbornly blank look on his face as he swerved his hips absently, causing his legs to swing, and the chair beneath them to swivel along as he declared over and over that he didn't even want to look at his homework, it bugged him that much, and that if Riku was there to help, he should get it out and start helping.

"You're a brat," Riku answered after a waste of five minutes, and then he plopped down on the carpet with his back against the wall and pulled the satchel bag over to dig through it. It smelled like Swedish Fish and other sweet things, and he tried to ignore that as he withdrew the beat-up textbook and pushed the backpack away.

Roxas didn't retort; when Riku's eyes lifted from the pages of the book he was flipping through, they met the other boy's and halted altogether. Roxas lay perfectly still, arms thrown out spread-eagle and his heels still propped on the seat of the leather easy chair, but his eyes were bright and tender. Attentive. Longing.

Riku swallowed.

Roxas rolled over onto his stomach and folded his arms, propping his chin on them and continuing to stare. A smile edged out of hiding at the corners of his mouth.

Riku tapped his fingers on the textbook, raising his brows.

Roxas's left leg slid off the cushion of the chair and fell to the carpet limply.

Riku frowned, looked down at the science book, fingered the edge of the page for a moment and then the warmth of the moment was gone. He couldn't get caught up in Roxas's charm because it wasn't _right_. It just wasn't; as wrong as everything else was, it just _wasn't right_.

_Chemistry homework. Chemistry, of all things. Really? What is this, a set-up? _

"What's your homework on?"

"I have to do those little diagrams of the atoms." Roxas sounded relatively appeased. Less moody, less obstinate. He sounded like he were content now, actually. And in a way that was nice, but it was still hard to accept. "You know, with the circles and the dots?"

"Oh...the electrons and stuff?"

"Yes. I have to do diagrams of covalent and ionic bonds."

"Ah." Riku thumbed through the book a few pages, finding the correct lesson and tapping the top of the page. "Where's some paper?"

"In my bag."

"Get it, please."

Roxas got to his hands and knees and crawled forward, over to his backpack and settling down Indian-style in front of Riku. Close enough for him to smell him again. Clean, sweet skin. Fruit-scented hair, to the side so effortlessly that it seemed as if it belonged there even without the help of hair products. Keenness of body spray. Roxas dug through the bag and pulled out a green notebook with a little picture of a nuclear explosion taped to the front, rummaged around a bit, and pulled out a black pen before pushing his bag aside. Riku rose his brows again, intrigued. Nuclear explosion on a science notebook? What a dork.

His mind tried to remind him that the real question was _who_ the dork in charge of that taped-on image was, Sora or Roxas?

He decided he wouldn't care.

Roxas opened to a blank sheet and scrawled his name in the upper right corner. Riku grunted.

"You haven't even started yet?"

"No."

"Gee."

Roxas sent him a glance from below his lashes, as if daring him to continue his complaints. Riku pressed his lips into a thin line, not because he was intimidated but because he was amused. Roxas added the date and the class hour beneath his name, then leaned forward and tilted his head, trying to read the page in the book. Riku shifted, angling himself closer and turning the book a bit so the other boy could read it.

"How would I draw an ionic bond?"

"Roxas, that's not an ionic bond. It's only ionic when they transfer—"

"Okay, whatever. When they trade electrons. I get it."

"Not trade. Transfer. One gives it up and the other gains it."

"_I get it_. How would I draw a covalent bond?"

"Well, I'd draw the two atoms..." Riku paused, examining the paper and the problem, then held his hand out for the pen. Roxas gladly handed it over. The silver-haired boy hunched forward and Roxas scooted around so they sat side-by-side, the two books balanced on Riku's thigh as he drew the answer. Roxas's gaze shifted between the homework and Riku's face as he did so, paying close attention to the way Riku's brow furrowed when he was reading the problem, how his lips moved ever so slightly, barely noticeable at all, when he counted the electrons he'd drawn, how his hair fell into his face but was so thin and so light that Roxas could almost see through it, could almost see his eyes but instead only saw flashes of them through the curtain of silver. And then there was his slender neck, sloping down to disappear into his thermal shirt, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows and the muscles in his forearm shifting beneath his pale skin as he drew...

"Okay."

Roxas tensed, quickly looked away so Riku wouldn't catch him staring. "'Okay', what?"

"Okay, I'm done. Look. It's a covalent bond, which means they're sharing electrons. Oxygen needs two more valence electrons to be stable, and if the two of them share like this, they're stable. See how I got that?"

Roxas snickered.

Riku cut him a quick glance, clearly missing the punch-line. "What?"

"It looks like you drew _boobs_."

Riku's jaw dropped. He looked to the diagram of two oxygen atoms and their double covalent bond, and after a moment of speechless gawking and wondering about how Roxas could be so fucking immature, he realized it did indeed look like he'd drawn boobs and he snorted, "Holy crap, you're right."

Roxas bit his tongue, face writ over in utter glee, and then he doubled forward and cracked up. Riku's lips twitched as he tried to keep his grin on low wattage, but he couldn't prevent a few chuckles from shyly slipping out here and there. The other boy hugged his stomach as if the hilarity were painful, turning delighted blue eyes over his shoulder and upon Riku's face. The older boy sat serenely beside him, grinning dimly and peering at the paper as though he really couldn't believe that he'd made such an artistic blunder, and his eyes were soft and his shoulders were relaxed and his guard was down, Roxas knew it, and before he could define just what it was that was causing his chest to overflow with a wonderfully overwhelming heat, he straightened up and leaned to the side and landed a kiss on Riku's cheek.

Riku stiffened, eyes widening, snapping over to meet Roxas's in search of an adequate explanation. Roxas blinked a few times, licking his lips because they were suddenly dry, and his brows furrowed as Riku continued to hound him silently. His gaze sharpened as it flickered all around his face, like Roxas had crossed the line or something.

Roxas wasn't sure how to handle to such a strange reaction but he managed, "I'm...sorry?"

Riku didn't say anything; his mouth drawn in a firm frown, his own brows knotted and his eyes glinted with thoughts Roxas couldn't even read if he dared. He just stared at him. And it was an intense stare, hard and critical and, alarmingly,_ wronged._

Roxas swallowed on a throat that was rapidly beginning to tighten. He slouched, feeling a gentle tremble starting at the tips of his fingers, and he opened his mouth to apologize again but he was too afraid of the building response. Instead he murmured, "...Riku?"

The older boy closed the textbook on the notebook and set it to the side, and then his hands folded loosely in his lap and he concentrated all his energy into staring. Roxas shifted, grimace becoming a pinched frown. There was something going on behind Riku's eyes, but he just couldn't figure out what it was. Didn't know if he fully wanted to.

"Do you want to kiss?" Riku finally asked, and Roxas's brows slowly climbed his forehead.

"...What?"

"Do you want to, Roxas? Do you wanna kiss me?"

"Well—uh—" Roxas frowned, felt the blush starting in the nooks between his nose and cheeks. "What kind of question is that? Are you stupid?"

"I don't want anything but a 'yes' or a 'no'."

"_Yes_!" Roxas threw his hands out, exasperated with the other boy's strange romantics. "Yes, I do! Is that so bad? That I want to kiss my boyfriend? God, Riku! How long have we been going out, now? Two months? Two and a half? Well, damn, do you think it's time for us to kiss yet, or what?"

"Rox—"

"Are you afraid? Are you pretending to be into me when you're really not? Do you not want to kiss a boy? Or am I just too _bratty_ for you?"

"Roxas. Cut it out."

"No. I won't. I want to know, Riku. I'd _like_ to know. Because _I want to kiss you_."

Roxas sat a few inches away from him, half on his knees and half cross-legged, and he let his hands drop limply to his lap as he gasped faintly for air, left moderately out of breath from his outburst. His cheeks were red and his eyes were narrowed, but they weren't angry. In fact, nothing about him was angry. Just _frustrated. _Riku could see the emotional frustration all over him, from one end to the other, and it was then that he sucked it up for real. Because Roxas wasn't a different person. It would be the same as kissing Sora—in fact, it _would_ be kissing Sora, if he wanted to get technical about it.

And holy shit, he just wished Roxas would _shut up_.

"Roxas...?"

"What?"

"Come kiss me."

Roxas gawked for just a moment, only as all the bitterness faded away and the reality sank back in. Then he crawled forward, slowly, not looking away from Riku as his knees bumped into the shins opposite them. He tipped his face up, feeling his breath catching in his throat. Riku didn't move. He sat against the wall, watching, waiting, thinking.

Roxas hesitated a few more seconds only because it was their first kiss and first kisses were supposed to be memorable—perfect, amazing, inviting, exhilarating—in some way or another. He kissed him then, hoped it wasn't too methodical, pressed his lips against Riku's and felt a shiver tingling at the base of his spine in absolute first-time indulgence. Riku settled back against the wall, lashes lowering as he opened his mouth a bit and returned the kiss, his mouth supple and warm and velvety-soft. Confident. Like he knew just what to do. But Roxas didn't think about that then; he saved that for later wondering. Instead his fingers curled on the carpet to either side of Riku's thighs and then there was a hand resting comfortably on his shoulder so he moved closer but pulled back, reluctantly, lower lip lingering there where he could feel and taste and smell Riku's breath. He shifted his gaze up coyly to meet intense sea-green.

Riku shrugged and moved his hand up to lay, a perfect fit, upon the slope were Roxas's neck became his shoulder, and after that Roxas shifted his position to a more comfortable one and waited patiently; sure enough, as he'd suspected, Riku leaned in and started another kiss. He acquiesced eagerly, kissing him back again. And again. And again.

The chemistry homework didn't get done until later that night, when Roxas was watching late-night comedies and eating his dinner.

* * *

The sound of waves was comforting. Sliding in from the depths of the ocean, pulling gently at the sand, and drifting back out slowly, slowy, with a piece of the world in its grasp. Peaceful, smooth, foaming along the coast as the sky overhead glowed a light gray and the clouds bulged, pregnant with rain. The breeze would start up at any moment, carrying the scent of the undulating waters and the waiting precipitation, with underlying hints of salty sea-life, the boardwalk and all its familiar smells, and the sweetness of the island flora that grew along the shoreline. The house was up on the hill amongst all the fresh, green grass, beyond the dunes and the wooden fence with the red mailbox and the stone path that wound around the back to the patio for a breath-taking view of the waves the backyard faded into.

He didn't know why the memories began at that house, that shore, that time. But they did. And as he sat in the chair with his hands folded in his lap, Roxas took a deep breath and with his long, slow sigh, his shoulders loosened and he felt himself settling more comfortably into the seat.

His eyes were closed, but he knew the way the room looked. Far too well, in his opinion. Dr. Ling across the room, behind the desk, pen and pad in hand, all the certifications and plaques on the wall and the lamp in the corner the same dull red and tan, big oak door closed on the rest of the office while their one-hour session carried on.

He saw his dad, the way he was when he was very little, the way he was when he still took him to the boardwalk and the 7-11 there and bought them foot-long hot dogs and Pop Rocks and Coke slushies to pig out on as they sat on the docks with their feet dangling high above the water and the gulls eyeing their food enviously. His mom always hated when they did because he usually got belly-aches from eating so much, but she just didn't understand. It was a father-son thing.

He saw his mom on the back patio with iced tea, the beach broad and empty beyond her, water and sand glistening in the sunlight. And their backyard dropped off into a sand dune, the edges of the lawn lined with deep green foliage, tall trees and fat bushes and bright, colorful flowers. The ever-blooming petals and the blossoming fruits signified the advent of summer. His mom was in a white tank top and khaki shorts and now she was standing on the sand near the drop-off with her iced tea in one hand and the other in her hair and she was staring out at the rolling waves with her sunglasses between her teeth. Young and beautiful and relaxed, like a newly-wed on her honeymoon enjoying the view even though her husband—new or old, it didn't matter now—was nowhere to be seen.

Sora licked his lips, opened his eyes and looked down at his black Converse. His gaze caught on the checkered wristband that rested comfortably on his left wrist. He frowned, looking up to meet Dr. Ling's stare.

"Oh," he said, quiet and fragile, and he frowned further as tears pricked the backs of his eyes.

"Yes?" The therapist's fingers shifted instinctively on the face of the cassette player.

"Oh...I..." Sora closed his eyes again because he was a little dizzy. He swallowed, hard. Focused on the waves, the sound, the echoes moving through his body and turning him into a pocket of mismatched memories and nothing more.

He saw his dad again, at the foot of his bed, and he wasn't sure when but then he started talking. Started babbling about his father and the story-books and the days they'd spend on the beach with an old surfboard only a four-year-old could have fun with, and how afterwards he'd need to bathe because otherwise he'd reek of saltwater and seaweed all night. How when he took those baths they'd be in the master bathroom and his dad would sit with him to make sure he washed his hair. He felt the words tumble out on their own accord, with lives of their own and an urgency to get out, out of his head, into the open and eventually onto a notepad. And sooner than he knew it, he started talking about that Bad Day, that Bad Day and all the warning signs he should have caught on to but was too naive, too innocent, too young to notice.

Suddenly he was awake again. Roxas blinked, light-headed and a little queasy, and he wiggled his fingers because for some reason his whole body felt numb. Heavy. Idle. He tilted his head, hair falling into his eyes. "Dr. Ling...?"

"Relax. You need to relax for the hypnosis to work correctly."

He relaxed.

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and after a few minutes he was gone again. Suspended somewhere between reality, fantasy, actuality, and memory. He mumbled now, the words pouring out again beneath his breath, about how he just wanted to forget, how he didn't want to forget, how he wished Roxas would go away, how he wished he could just remember on a day-to-day basis, how he wished he could be in control again—

Roxas's eyes fluttered open and he lifted a hand, weakly, touching his temple where his head was beginning to ache.

The waves, the beach, the wind, the clouds—

"You're an alter."

The mother, the father, the son, the model family—

"No. ...Maybe. And if I am?"

The tragedy, the comedy, the romance, the horror—

"You're not whole. You're only a part. To be whole again, you need to concede. You need to open up to Sora, too. You need to remember _everything_. And you need to accept it."

The eyes, the hand, the wall, the—

Roxas lifted his chin, staring across the room at the therapist. His head was pounding. His heart was racing. The tape in the cassette player was no longer soothing; it was like nails on a chalkboard, giving him chills, making him want to cover his ears just so the god-awful rushing of water would lose some of its intensity. The whole room seemed too bright, too warm, too loud. Stifling. A dream's distortion of reality that buckled and swayed like an explosion of colors and sounds. Blurred, at a distance, almost palpable, almost level, almost coherent but not there yet.

His voice sounded miles and miles away when he spoke. Didn't even feel like he'd moved his mouth.

"I'm not going away," Roxas said.

Dr. Ling's finger twitched from the Play button to the Stop button, but he didn't press it. The sound of the waves continued to roll, and Roxas had to leave because he could feel his lunch about to resurface.

* * *

**A/N: Happy Valentine's Day, in advance. 8D Or, if you'd rather, happy Friday-the-13. **


	15. Afflicted

_**Candy Boy **_

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the amazing franchise © Disney and Square Enix; everything else © their rightful owners. **

**Ratings/Warnings: M—profanity, graphic themes, AU **

**A/N: Sometimes the only way to get through a block is to just... write. Enjoy, you guys. xP**

* * *

_Chapter Fifteen _

* * *

"Mom?" Roxas rapped on his mother's ajar bedroom door, asking permission to enter even though he hung halfway through the threshold already.

From her bed, his mother lifted her head from her folded arms and waved at her son. Her television was on, tuned in to the post-news sitcoms. She lay curled in a ball atop her blankets, looking quite comfortable and ready for bed in her sweats and an over-sized T-shirt. Roxas trudged through the doorway and wavered at the edge of her mattress for a moment, before deciding the waters were safe and hopping up to sit at the foot of the bed. Over his shoulder, the proverbial laughter echoed in the sitcom's audience. He'd always wondered if sometimes the audience was pre-recorded, or if there really were special signals for them to cheer and laugh. Contemplating this again, he traced the thread on his mother's top quilt, little gold arabesques in every curly design on a deep red comforter. It looked rather elegant. Expensive, if anything.

His mom shifted a bit, rolling onto her back and crossing her arms beneath her head. She nudged her son with her toe, giving him a feeble smile when he glanced up in surprise.

"What'sa matter, sweetie?"

Roxas regarded her in silence, observed her rather teenage-like sprawl, and his brows knotted ever so gently. Why was she asking what _his_ matter was? She had been like this since they'd left Dr. Ling's office. She hadn't even indulged on the McDonald's apple pie fritter she'd bought; she'd just stuck it in the fridge for some other day. And she _never_ did that, unless something was weighing on her mind. And very much so at that.

She looked distant, lost in her thoughts, tired and wistful and jaded. World-sick. He could understand that. What bothered him was that he didn't particularly understand _what_ had set her off into such a fit of melancholy.

"You didn't eat your apple pie," he informed her, with a matter-of-fact kind of concern.

She blinked, a few strands of hair caught on her eyelash and flicking up and down as her lids fluttered. "No," she agreed, sounding as though she were cautious of his direction with such a statement, like she had a feeling where it was headed. "I didn't eat it."

"Did I do something?"

"Oh, So--" His mother sat up on her elbows, trailing off for just a second, looking guilty and shocked all at once. Roxas wondered what she had been about to say, but settled for what she said next--"Sweetheart, why do you think you did something?"

"Because I have a record of, um, doing things." He shrugged, feeling cowed and awkward now because he was talking to her about it instead of writing it off as implacable, and glanced to his right foot where it dangled off the side of her bed as his fingers fumbled together, threaded in and out, in and out.

"Liiiike...?"

"Causing a hassle for you."

His mother sat up slowly, off her elbows. Her hair fell across her ears in messy wisps and she didn't care to save herself from premature bedhead. Instead, she peered at the boy in front of her as though she could hardly believe he had said such a thing. Roxas figured if she was putting up a front, she could just forget it, because he was well aware of the trouble he'd kindled over the years. Some of it he regretted, some of it he didn't; but it was still the point and he felt rather... wrong, talking to her like this. Like intimacy between the two of them was too foreign to even attempt. Like talking to her without some kind of anger floating above their heads, hiding behind their sighs as they both tried to tolerate each other--like it wasn't normal to just ask her if she was alright.

Or maybe it was just that he suddenly felt like a liar, a big fat liar, felt like he was lying to himself about being concerned for her. Felt like perhaps he didn't really care but was just going through motions.

Her hand tangled into his hair and he flinched away only because he didn't want her to mess up his carefully strewn spikes. Roxas looked at her from an angle, head slightly bowed and fingers clutched together anxiously. His mother's knuckles trailed down his cheek, her palm fell to rest on his shoulder, and her smile looked so wrong in this whole situation that he suddenly felt very apprehensive of what was on her mind.

"You're not... You're not a hassle, Roxas."

He grunted thoughtfully. Her hand moved upwards, stroking his hair just above the back of his neck. It was soothing.

"Roxas...?"

Oh, Lord. There was the proverbial little tilt at the end of his name. The dainty upturn of the second syllable, the question on her breath that was both foreboding and nearly riddlistic. He'd heard it many times before, always precursor to a big question, a deep question, a question that would greatly affect the way he felt. Here it was--the real reason she was so preoccupied, so pensive, so wistful and distant. And he had to admit, he wanted to know.

He swallowed, reached up to make sure his hair was still fighting gravity, fingering the flipped layers and tufts with less than subdued nervosity. "Yeah, Mom?"

She took a slow breath, pressed her fingertips to the back of his neck, then pulled her hand away and dropped both to her lap. "Will you tell me what's really going on with you and Riku?"

The TV audience roared with tinny laughter.

Roxas didn't quite know what to do at first, only capable of understanding the velocity of his gut dropping, the intensity of the sudden onset of tremors that tried to turn his muscles to goo, and the skip between heartbeats that he thought might be something to worry about if it continued at that erratic rate.

His mother's face shifted, beginning with the stony patience and curiosity that had accompanied her question and becoming something strung between true worry and inquisition. She seemed rather uncomfortable with the topic, and Roxas felt his heart begin to hammer with a sense of angry betrayal.

Dr. Ling. Dr. Ling had said something to his mother. The _bastard_.

"Why does it matter?" he asked before he could get a good hold on his temper.

"Dr. Ling mentioned--"

"That fucking _snitch_!"

"_Roxas_," his mother hissed, sending him a disapproving look. "Calm. Down. He mentioned Riku to me because he's _concerned_. As a professional, he's mandated to search for concerns. And to try to get to the bottom of them when he finds them."

Roxas was taken aback, nearly choking on his words as they ripped out of his mouth. "Riku is not a _concern_! If anything, he's been a huge help to me!"

"Why, Roxas? Why has he been a huge help to you? You--you have never told me a single thing about him. You never told me that you were going out with him, let alone that you were even _acquaintances_. And besides that, you never even told me that you were interested in boys--"

"_Mom_--" His face was on fire. His blood was just as hot. He could feel his emotions surging, blindsided and overwhelmed.

"Dr. Ling told me that you weren't complying to hypnosis because you were afraid of blacking out. You've never refused therapy like that before, honey. He said that you were afraid of blacking out because you didn't want to miss time with your new boyfriend--this Riku boy. And today--God, today--he pulled me to the side while you were down the hall at the pop machines, and he told me that even though you complied to hypnosis, you were subconsciously fighting it the whole way through. That you were talking about your childhood, mostly, but that...before you started focusing on those things, you admitted to things he hadn't expected. All of it having to do with Riku." His mother took a shrill breath, looking so uncomfortable now that her face was pinching and she looked like a distressed young girl, confused and hurt and helpless. Close to tears, even, but too bitter to cry. Roxas was frozen in place, unable to really do a thing but listen as she let him in on all these secrets, slipped out behind his back. Her voice was high and delicate when it emitted next, intensifying the distraught frown creasing her brow--"Roxas, why didn't you ever fill me in on this? Why didn't you come to me first? Why do I have to hear all this from your goddamn _therapist_?!"

He swallowed. It was all he could do, caught red-handed. _That you admitted to things he hadn't expected, all of it having to do with Riku_. What the hell could _that_ possibly mean? The only things he could remember himself... Kissing. Their first kiss. The hand-holding. Riku's early-morning visit on Christmas.

But now that he was wracking his brain for anything that could potentially fall into the category of _Things Dr. Ling Hadn't Expected That Had to Do With Riku_, which sounded incredibly of the intimate type if you asked him--now that he was trying his hardest to come up with something that could shock his mother more than the fact that he had a boyfriend and hadn't told her about it... He was starting to get the sensation that there had been more _"things" _than just the kisses and the hand-holding and the embracing. He felt it in every fiber of his being, that there was something else--something much, _much_ more intimate, something that would _definitely_ fall into the _Things Dr. Ling Hadn't Expected_ category.

In the bathroom. Something in the bathroom.

A sharp throb pricked at his right temple, pulsed for a second or two, then faded out into a gentle reminder. The kind of headache that hid in the back of the skull, not quite noticeable but still there.

Roxas remembered abruptly that, before all the revelations had exploded behind his eyes, his mother had asked him a question. And he owed her an answer.

"Riku's my boyfriend," he edged out below his breath, feeling a defensive glare furrow his brow. "We've been together for... I don't know, two and a half months. Maybe more. And Mom, I'm not _gay_. I just... There's something about him. There's just something I like about him."

"Well, I'd hope so. Especially if you're in a relationship, sweetie." She uttered a weakly teasing laugh. "I don't care if you're gay. I'm your mother. It's not really as shocking as the fact that you're with somebody and you haven't told me. I didn't ever want to hear something so personal from that stupid therapist. I don't like him."

"That makes two of us."

"I'm glad he told me, though."

Roxas fidgeted, wondering if the discomfiture had been transferred fully to him now. It sure as hell felt like it. "What...exactly..._did_ he tell you?"

"I told you what he said."

"About the 'things he didn't expect'?"

She blinked, taking a portion of the awkwardness back; she licked her lips, choosing her next words carefully. They were in a field of landmines here, she knew that as well as he did. "According to Dr. Ling, you were rambling about getting very close with Riku. Getting very... physical. You spoke about different places in the house."

Roxas felt his head slowly draining of composure with every word his mother murmured. Different places in the house? Getting very physical?

That only meant one thing.

Riku was lying about them not doing anything together during the times Roxas couldn't remember.

But why the fuck would he lie about something like that? Why would he torment Roxas's mind, force him to struggle to remember and understand, while he knew how hard it already was for him to cope with the world when his mind realigned with time and reality?

He'd always thought that when he blacked out, he was the same as he always was. That maybe there was something wrong in the wiring of his brain, something like two rooms there that stored different memories, and they didn't share a door. That one of the rooms just sucked up all the daily things for a while, then locked up and allowed the other to file the day's records away while it went on break until the other decided it wanted a rest, too.

Roxas pulled his knees up to his chest and hugged them, staring down at his toes. His headache was fully recognizable now. He just couldn't get all of this information--new and old--connected into a functional, comprehensible chain of events.

"Sweetheart... Roxas..." His mother stroked his hair again, then his back. It wasn't comforting this time, though; it was taunting. He suddenly felt more unreal than ever.

"Roxas," his mom said again, "you know that I love you no matter what."

"That's what you're supposed to say. You're my mom."

"I mean it, though. And Riku... I've seen him once before. He came over one afternoon. He's a nice boy, Roxas."

"Thank you."

She laughed at that, raked her fingernails up and down his back slowly. "That's it, honey. Don't be mad. Don't be embarrassed. I know what it's like to love somebody."

"Love--?"

"Well, I'd like to think that... you know, if you're doing things with someone there's some kind of love involved." She paused, pulling him closer to her. Roxas allowed her to do so, rolling limply against her as she cradled him to her chest, giving him room to remain curled in a ball as she wrapped her arms around him. "What have you done together?"

"_Mom_," he spat, and that was all he needed to say. Just _Mom_. Deliberate and final. She sighed in authoritative disappointment, drawing idle designs along his shoulders with her fingertips.

"I'm sorry I had to find out that way."

"Mm."

"I'm sorry Dr. Ling knew about it before me, but that wasn't my fault."

Roxas shrugged limply, catching her implication that he was to blame for that one.

"If you warm up my apple pie fritter, I'll drop the subject for now and we can pick it up some other time. When, um, we're a little more comfortable with it."

Roxas mulled over this for a moment too long to be serious contemplation, then sighed and pulled away to slip off the side of the bed. "Sure thing, Mom. But that may be a really long time."

"I'm fine with that," she said, but the tone of her voice told him she wasn't completely fine with it. But hey, she was just his mom; what could she do besides wait for him to be ready to talk about it?

He heard her getting off the bed and entering the hall behind him, shuffling along and stretching her limbs a little. "Honey?"

"What?"

"Do you know how to use a condom?"

Roxas thought that maybe that was an attempt at lightening the situation, but after a moment he knew that she was as serious as ever.

"I'm not comfortable talking about this right now," he mumbled, and he couldn't help but laugh a little at himself. He just needed to hear something in the air other than their tense voices.

* * *

His conversations with Tidus were always ones of tender peculiarity, quaint and typical in their gentle concision. There was something they shared, a mutual power to understand each other without having to speak too many revealing words, and if either of them had been willing to admit it was something of a brotherhood, it would have been established as such long before. But as it was, Riku was too stubborn to acknowledge a platonic bond when he had one, and Tidus was too reluctant to believe it went that deep, and both were too awkward when it came to 'fessing up about emotions that the topic would never be touched—would instead remain the big purple elephant in the room while they went about their business with each other.

The particular discussion that occurred Friday afternoon didn't lack in Tidus-esque charm either, as they stood with their backs against the concrete walls of the YMCA outside tennis courts, both with their jackets fully fastened and their eyes trained on the pale sky overhead. The constant _thwack-thwack_ of YMCA regulars volleying the little yellow balls off the concrete walls was a soft rhythm behind their voices, mumbled and echoing faintly in the tennis bay around them.

"It's not your fault Yuna left the table," Tidus insisted.

"Sure."

"I _am_ sure. It was just that..." Tidus paused, as though the whole fiasco had happened so long ago that he could barely remember the true cause for Yuna's departure that day. "It was just that everyone was so worked up, and she didn't want to get in anyone's way... You know how girls can be."

_Not really_, Riku thought, and shifted to lean more comfortably against the cement wall--as comfortable as he could get, anyway. Hands in his pockets to keep them warm, he tilted his head and a few locks of silver hair fell into his eyes. "I'm still sorry."

"I don't know what was up with Leon. He's kind of... toned down his spite--a little, at least--but I think he's still kind of put-off."

"I don't know why," Riku mumbled, half to himself and half to Tidus. Tidus shrugged idly, and Riku wasn't sure whether that meant he didn't know, either, or that he _did_ know and just wasn't going to tell him. He had the strangest feeling that Tidus had his own opinions about what had happened during lunch the week before Thanksgiving break.

"Look, man..." Tidus sighed, swung away from the wall and lingered in front of his friend with a lop-sided smile on his face, rather dim compared to the other exuberant expressions he held in his back pocket, but still Tidus all the same. "I just wanted you to know that I don't care what's going on with them, and I don't care what's going on with you." The smile faded, and he leveled grim blue eyes on Riku. The taller boy frowned in return, suddenly reminded of the soccer team's season-closing party, and Coach Highwind's front yard and Tidus's alien graveness.

Tidus looked down as he scuffed the toe of his Skechers on the ground absently, seeming somewhat awkward in speaking his next words. Awkward, but not at all insincere. Riku knew that, and he also respected it.

"What I care about," the blond mumbled, peering up at Riku through stray strands of his sun-bleached mop, "is my friends. You happen to be one of them. I care how they're doing, whether they like it or not. Leon, Cloud... They're my pals, not my friends. Zidane and Zack, Yuffie and Aerith and Tifa... They're all just buddies of mine. Peers that are worth more than others. But they're not my _friends_. There's a difference. I know you know what I'm talking about, because you've clearly come to realize the same thing with someone else."

Riku blinked a few times, gawking at Tidus incredulously. He wondered, vaguely, if Tidus would ever care to know that what he had _realized_ with that _someone else_ was not exactly what the blond was preaching about. It was similar, he'd admit, but he couldn't help but make contradictions in the back of his mind. The confessions burned in his throat, threatening his cool with their very existence, and after a long moment of mulling over Tidus's words, he really, honestly considered telling him about Sora and the bond they had. That he'd held him. Kissed him. Finger-fucked him. Orgasmed for him. And, ultimately, that he enjoyed it quite a lot, but that he also enjoyed simply sitting around being friendly with him, too. How's that for a realization, man?

Tidus raked his fingers through his hair as he looked off across the courts towards the YMCA building. The steady _thwack-thwack, thwack, thwack-thwack _of the tennis balls and their respective rackets was the only sound for a few moments, until Tidus redirected his gaze back to the silver-haired boy and murmured hesitantly, "Can I ask you something?"

The candid openness in Tidus's face made Riku pause again, made him remember the brisk night on Cid's walk and, before that, the evening on the corner of 39th and 40th. Made him realize abruptly just how many times Tidus had been dangerously close to stumbling upon the truth without Riku even having to vocalize it. His stomach dropped as he stared at the blond in front of him, suddenly suspicious that Tidus was about to ask the million-dollar question. "...Shoot."

"Is he really schizo?"

Or... not.

The inquiry, as innocently ignorant as it was, made his spine go rigid and his skin ice over. _Is he really schizo_? How completely typical. Here he was, thinking that Tidus was different from them, but in reality he was still just another rat. Feeling the impotence--the inability to change the way people saw Sora, the way people saw Roxas, the way this would inevitably make people see him--and the affliction boiling in his chest, coiling tight as it amalgamated into a bitter, helpless rage, Riku's hands twitched out of his pockets and formed instinctive fists. Tidus was just staring at him, waiting patiently for an answer, and little did he know that he was going to _get_ an answer, he was going to get _the fucking answer_, he was going to hear _every detail_ and he was _not_ going to forget them and he was going to tell every single one of them that--

"If you're gonna hit me, go right on ahead. Just remember that if you do, I won't be the one to blame when we get kicked out of the YMCA."

The world snapped back into focus and the fog surrounding his head drained away at the corners; it was like a filter was taken off each of his senses and he felt his muscles trembling with the readied adrenaline, buzzing and sizzling away. Tidus was standing in front of him, peering down at him. How he was peering down at him when he was an inch or two shorter, Riku wasn't sure, but it definitely felt that way. Tidus just stood there, unmoved and silent, arms at his sides, waiting for Riku to get a grip.

Good God, was he really that enraged? That he had been about to get into it with his best friend and hadn't even been aware of it?

"He's not schizo," Riku insisted, and his voice was sharp and fragile. Like broken glass.

Tidus nodded, stony stare still in place, and slipped his hands into his pockets as he rocked to and fro on his heels. Riku's limbs felt as though all the strength was being steadily sucked out; he saw it now. Such a simple answer was sufficient enough for him, because Tidus was not working against him.

_I have trust issues_, he noted briefly.

"...He's not schizo," Riku repeated, uncurling his fingers and practically deflating with the release of aggressive tension. "He's got DID."

Tidus blinked. "The hell is that?"

"Dissociative identity disorder. It's when--"

"Well, I know what it means after you explained the acronym." Tidus crossed his arms, tilted his head. Looked too... calm after being so close to sparking his friend's belligerence. "That explains a lot. The way he can be, like, two different people sometimes."

"...Yeah."

"Doesn't that get hard?"

"Very."

Tidus continued to sway back and forth, distracted by his considerations and examining anything but the boy standing in front of him. Riku slouched back against the wall, cradling his temple in his fingertips. Tidus finally settled his skittish gaze on him again, and Riku returned it with enough ice in his eyes to ensure Tidus knew their entire conversation went absolutely nowhere. And Tidus just looked pensive, eyes clouded as though he had more he wanted to ask.

But they left it at that; Tidus slipped one hand into his back pocket and waved with the other for Riku to follow him. "Let's blow this popsicle joint. What do you say, Riku, my man? Wanna grab some food somewhere?"

"Nah. I've gotta get home and make dinner."

There was something like a truce riding on their shoulders as they left--modest, curious, weak. But still there, and that was what mattered. They both knew that, understood it with the reciprocal knowledge of two friends, unspoken but still significant.

* * *

He saw Leon on Monday, in the hallway outside of the cafeteria before first period. Leon cast him a wary glance of victimized petulance, with Yuffie flanking his left and Cloud his right; and Riku knew for certain that even if Leon's spite was allegedly wearing off, he would still never comprehend why Riku had said the things he had. Why their beloved "Quicksilver" had extricated himself from the tight-knit posse.

He let Leon hold his gaze for the entirety of his walk through the hall, from the entrance to the staircase where he skipped up a few steps, then broke the stare-down and simply made his way to his classroom. He rather enjoyed his French class, and didn't really feel like being late because he had a chance to argue with an old friend about who was right and who was wrong.

A boy with a checkered wristband flagged him down as he emerged from the stairwell on the second floor, and for a moment Riku wondered if he had told Roxas his schedule, or if he somehow remembered from Sora's portion of their knowledge.

"Um... Good morning," the silver-haired sophomore mumbled, raising his brows. After the past week, he'd found it easier to tolerate the Kaimana boy's second personality, and it was only a small fear--a childish one, he supposed--that gnawed at the back of his mind. Of course he wondered when those blue eyes were going to turn towards him and be Sora's again, but he'd opted it would be easier for everyone to just go with the flow until that change came about. To just let things happen without much of a fight; because, really, how in the world could he fight something like that?

Roxas tugged him out of the hallway traffic, hand lingering on his arm. Riku's chest locked up a bit as the feel of his hand on his shoulder sent recollections like pinpricks up and down his spine. He could feel the other boy's body from memory, the way it fit in his arms whether he was Roxas or Sora; the way his mouth felt and tasted, whether he was Roxas or Sora; the way his skin smelled, the way his breath sounded, the way his fingers slid perfectly between his--

"Morning," Roxas murmured, drawing his hand away as if embarrassed to display such affection in the busy hallway, even though just a few days ago they'd held hands all the way to his fucking class. Were his cheeks red? Riku frowned, trying to determine the answer to this question; Roxas blinked, baffled by his sudden choice of focus. "Morning...?" he tried again.

"I need to get going. What's up?"

Roxas shrugged, scowled at such a brusque dismissal, and glanced around the hallway at all the people passing them by. Going about their days carelessly, not having to wonder whether or not they'd forget to remember what happened.

"Roxas... What?"

His gaze flickered back over to meet Riku's and his scowl became a deep frown; he thought of all the dubious contemplations that had plagued his aching head over the past four days and didn't know quite what to think of the silver-haired boy standing in front of him.

"I'm going to be late," Riku mumbled, crossing his arms. "What's wrong?"

_He said that you were afraid of blacking out because you didn't want to miss time with your new boyfriend--this Riku boy. And... he pulled me to the side... and he told me that even though you complied to hypnosis, you were subconsciously fighting it the whole way through. ...That you admitted to things he hadn't expected. All of it having to do with Riku._

_Don't be mad. Don't be embarrassed. I know what it's like to love somebody._

"I want you to come over after school today," Roxas said. Riku's frown wavered in degree, somewhere between severe and uncertain.

"Okay," he acquiesced, sounding less than excited. Viewed Roxas from behind a piece of the hair that was generally in the same spot across his eyes every day, peered at him in impassive scrutiny. "I'll have to head home before dinner, though. My dad's off today and he wants..." Riku trailed off, suddenly deciding not to finish his thought. Instead he shrugged, casting his gaze away from the boy in front of him. "I've gotta be home before dinner," he reiterated.

Roxas frowned, an ache flowering in the middle of his chest--but the sensation there was dull, almost numb. He wasn't distrustful, and he wasn't faithless, he was just too overwhelmed to really think much about any nuances or veiled messages. All he wanted to do was get to class, get through the school-day, spend some time with his boyfriend (though the way things were looking, their agenda might consist of some unsettlingly serious discussions), read a book or watch some TV and then go to bed.

Part of him wanted to detach from the world again, and then part of him didn't. He wasn't sure which idea he liked better.

Riku eyed him up and down, and Roxas wondered if he looked as bothered as he felt. But if he noticed it, the silver-haired boy didn't give any sign of acknowledgment or compassion. Instead he nodded to Roxas and brushed past his shoulder, heading in the direction of his first period. Roxas followed him with his eyes, dark with a sentiment Riku didn't want to analyze. So he didn't look over his shoulder, just continued walking and tried to hold his will steady even as that gaze burned into his neck. He was watching him, and Riku didn't like the way he felt guilty for walking away, but what the hell else was he supposed to do? He wanted to talk to him, sure, but right now Roxas looked pissy, he hadn't even said "No, wait", so he clearly didn't want to continue any kind of conversation, and that was what the lunch hour was for.

They both had classes to get to, anyway.

* * *

"My mom knows about us," he'd said during lunch, looking more sincere now that they actually had time to talk. Kairi and Selphie had gone off to the bathrooms, and Riku's lunch tray was situated on the table so that both of them could pick off of it at once. Riku had continued eating for a few moments before the words really sank in, and when they had, he'd thrown his plastic fork to the tabletop and stared at the boy across from him with genuine shock etched through his features.

"What?" he'd managed, after observing Roxas poke at the cafeteria food, unable to meet his gaze. "What do you mean, she knows?"

"What do you _think_ I mean?" Roxas had spat, not mean-spirited in the least. "What, are you surprised that shedidn't, or that she _does_?"

He'd gone on to explain to Riku that his mom had found out through his therapist, which, he stressed, was extremely embarrassing and total, unfair betrayal and that he was more than sorry that their relationship had to be revealed in that way. And as he went on, Riku felt more and more disconcerted, more and more like his private life had been ripped open and peered into like some kind of demented biology class dissection. His _therapist_ had broken the news. And that... That made it feel even more like some kind of estranged experiment.

"Is that why you want me to come over?" he'd asked him, reaching for his fork but then aborting the process, not very hungry anymore now that he was feeling something like a test subject under a microscope. He'd been hung up on only one train of thought, then--that if Roxas had been in therapy and compliant with hypnosis, and if his assumptions about hypnotherapy were true, Roxas could have very well been blurting out Sora's knowledge as well as his own. And if he was blurting out Sora's knowledge, then there was a definite possibility that he had spoken of memories Sora had of Riku. Some of which--all of which, even--were relatively fucking _private_.

And Riku had been able to focus only on that, even as Roxas went on to admit that his mother--Yuuko Kaimana herself--had asked her son to invite Riku over, now that she knew what was going on. And, Roxas had emphasized, that was even more embarrassing. Too cliché in a way, he claimed.

And Riku had also been struck by another thought then, that added on to the ominous train lurching around in circles in his head-- If anyone had relayed to Roxas what he had confessed to while under hypnosis, that would mean that Roxas might suspect Riku was lying. Lying about him, lying about himself, lying about everything he'd ever told Roxas.

Maybe it was that complex. Maybe. But there was also a chance that it was much simpler than that, too. It seemed that most of these things Riku tried to figure out beforehand never turned out the way he'd evaluated they would.

He'd agreed.

He'd said, "Yeah. Sure. I'll come over if she wants me to."

And now here he was, sitting on one side of the couch with Roxas on the opposite end, his mother in a chair from the dining table that she'd pulled over in front of the television. She sat with her arms crossed and one leg hooked over the other, looking slightly disheveled, like she'd just come back from work and thrown on some lounging clothes before her son and his apparent boyfriend arrived, and she peered at both boys equally where they sat on pens and needles before her.

The silence over the living room was deafening. Smothering. Tense, unsteady, and awkward.

Roxas shifted, staring at his feet. Riku glanced at him from the corner of his eye, then flicked his gaze over to that of Mrs. Kaimana. She met his stare, following a similar path away from her son. She regarded Riku silently, and the graveness of her eyes told him that she knew what he was feeling. He had no doubt that she did. That she knew he was uncomfortable as hell, and for many reasons. That she knew the situation was more complicated, more fragile, than Roxas displayed it to be.

Riku's cheeks tingled as an unexpected, insurgent blush spread across his nose. God, this was galling. He looked to his feet, too; Roxas had the right idea with that one. Staring at his toes was much easier than staring at the woman stationed in front of them.

"Mm," she began, breaking the silence, and the tone in her voice was nothing like the disapproving Yuuko that Riku had met so many weeks ago. It was still wary, somewhat critical, but in the way that was obligatory for any parent. Given a situation like this, even more so. "Does anyone want something to drink? A snack, or...?"

"No," they echoed, simultaneously. They exchanged a glance, equally intrigued by their incident of vocal concurrence, but both quickly looked back to a common distraction of jittery hands and tapping toes.

Yuuko Kaimana shifted, as if she too were uncomfortable, which Riku figured she had the right to be, and then cleared her throat and tucked some strands of hair behind her left ear. Lips pursed in indecisive concentration, she again looked between the two of them, then opted to just dive into it. There was no way to beat around the bush here. And perhaps it was better not to, anyway.

"So... Is it love, then?" She punctuated with a brusque chuckle, trying her best to make it sound as light-hearted and flippant as intended.

"No," Roxas said at the same time Riku muttered, "Don't know." and they shared another glance between themselves as if they'd expected a different answer from the other.

The woman frowned gingerly, unsure of how to interpret such a reaction. "Okay, boys. All jokes aside, we need to talk."

"I didn't take that as a joke," Roxas mumbled, fidgeting in the corner of the couch he was trying so desperately to disappear into.

"Well, I sure hope your _answer_ was the joke," Riku edged out below his breath, cutting a glimpse in Roxas's direction.

Roxas rolled his shoulders in a rough shrug, returning Riku's cold stare with nearly the same degree of resentment. "Nope, it was the truth. I'm not sure if you should be saying 'I love you' so early on in a relationship, don't you think?"

The silver-haired boy stared daggers at the moody boy across the couch from him, slumped sullenly with his cheek propped in his palm, a scathing frown tugging at the edges of his mouth but seeming too delicate to be a true sentiment. It looked more as though Roxas were hiding something behind it, but Riku didn't necessarily think it would be a good idea to dig on that subject just yet. At the moment he was more or less wondering how the fuck Roxas's bad temperaments could come and go so smoothly, without any kind of warning transition, nothing at all. Like Sora's emotional earthquakes--but Roxas's had more destruction in their wake.

"Whatever," Riku murmured, perturbed that he was unable to find anything suave to shoot back. ...And not particularly wanting to argue with Roxas in front of Mrs. Kaimana. The atmosphere in the little townhome felt haphazard enough.

The woman sighed loudly to draw the attention back in her direction, and smiled when both sets of incensed eyes landed upon her. "Seriously now, kids. We've got some things to talk about." She gave them a moment of silence, waiting to see if either one would start protesting or digressing again, but neither did. She let out another sigh, this one feeble. "Alright... This is what I was told--"

"I hate him."

Yuuko chose to ignore her son's interjecting pledge of enmity towards his therapist, continuing as though he hadn't uttered a word. "I was informed by Roxas's therapist that you two are together, and have been for around two months now. That you, Roxas, weren't aware of it, and didn't really talk about it much. Until Thursday, while you were doing therapy. I'm not..." She paused, looking up at the ceiling and considering her next words carefully. Swallowing, she recalled the story her son's therapist had told her, then cleared her throat and leveled a reprieving stare on both boys. Her voice came out even and strong, contradicting the slightly uneasy lilt to her previous words. "I'm not going to tell you everything he said, because I'm pretty sure that if it's true--which I don't see why it wouldn't be, honestly--if it's true, I'm sure you both know what may have been said. So. I'm just going to ask you guys what you're willing to tell me, because who else should I trust with the real story, right?"

A long, anxious silence settled over the three of them. The boy with the checkered wristband shifted again, head hung and face hidden somewhere amidst his mess of hair and cotton T-shirt. What had been the focus of the screen-printed tee today? Three Days Grace, Riku had noted. A good choice.

The hush continued, stealthy and heavy, and Roxas let out a long breath. Riku wondered if he was expecting _him_ to start talking--but it really wasn't his time to do so. He was positive of that. He was the boyfriend, not the son, so it wasn't up to him to start the explaining. And it took him a moment, but finally Roxas seemed to comprehend that the other two occupants of the living room and its deadly silence were patiently waiting on him, and he looked up, gaze flickering between his mother and his significant other. He inhaled slowly, center of both their stares, and then he cracked.

"I came to in November, you guys. The last time I'd been awake... The last that I'd remembered was, like, sometime in August or September. I think my calendar says September 5."

Riku blinked, a faint frown passing over his face. Roxas recorded the days he was conscious?

"And I freaked out, because that's a _long time_ if you think about it." Roxas's voice was getting softer and softer in tone, fading from defensive to vulnerable. Riku's frown deepened. "I talked to Kairi, and she fucking--" He paused there, glanced to his mother below his lashes as if waiting for her to chide him for the use of profanity. But she was quiet. He swallowed, and resumed. "--told me that I was dating somebody. A boy. Riku. ..._Hello_! Here I am, having no fucking clue what's going on, and then I get told that I've got a boyfriend. I told Dr. Ling about that, and he seemed...really interested, which pissed me off. Like... Oh, let's pay attention to the gay boy who didn't know he was gay who's already a freak because he has memory issues--"

"Roxas, stop it," his mother whispered, brows knit together. "You know that's not the truth."

"That's how I felt!" he cried, throwing his hands out for emphasis. "That's how I felt, Ma! That's all I ever told him. I never said a single thing about kissing, or hand-holding, or any of that stupid crap."

"So?" Yuuko Kaimana implored.

"'So' what?"

Riku leaned further against the armrest on his side of the sofa, not minding his exclusion from this discussion. He might even be able to get a good hold on some of the puzzle pieces he was still missing in the masterpiece entitled _Candy Boy_, might be able to make some more connections if he just sat there and paid attention.

"So," his mother repeated, "you haven't answered me yet. What's going on between you two?"

"We're dating," Roxas declared.

"I think that's probably common knowledge by now, Roxas."

"Well, you asked."

"Look, sweetie, I'm just curious because I'm your mother. And as your mother it's something I need to be aware of, for many reasons--"

"We've kissed."

Roxas and his mother both looked to Riku, forgotten on the right half of the cream-colored couch, peered at him as though they hadn't expect him to take part in their contentious conversation so soon. Roxas's mouth hung open like he had a sentence forming on the tip of his tongue, but instead was staring rather indignantly at the silver-haired boy four feet away. Mrs. Kaimana blinked a few times, gaze flicking up and down Riku, from his toes to the top of his head, and he swallowed once and straightened up, tapping a few fingers on the arm of the couch as an outlet for the jitters dancing through his nervous system.

"We've kissed," Riku said a second time, looking now to the clean white carpet of the Kaimana household. He didn't really feel like he shouldn't be admitting it; in fact, he felt more that he was obliged to, because he and Mrs. Kaimana were on the same side of the story here. "We've kissed and we've held hands, and that's pretty much it."

"We've cuddled," Roxas added scornfully, almost mockingly, and when Riku glimpsed at him he found the corner of his mouth upturned in a typically Roxas half-smirk. Roxas felt his eyes and turned to peer at him directly, his sarcastic smile evaporating quickly. "Is that all we've done? Really?" He frowned now, but the sharpness was in his eyes, not on his face. "We've kissed and held hands and cuddled. And that's it. That's what you told me. How is it, Riku, that you've been able to hold yourself back for two months? And only when I'm conscious have we had our first kiss...? Don't you think it's a little odd that I can remember all of our firsts? Do you plan them? But how the fuck could _you_ know when I'm having a blackout? How do you know when I'm going to wake up one morning and tell you that I don't remember the past few days? How do _you_ know, when _I _don't even know?"

"...I don't know, Roxas."

Roxas grit his teeth, face drawn in a strained, anxious scowl. "Really, Riku... That's all we've done? Kissing, hugging, hand-holding? Do you promise me?"

Riku kept his eyes trained on Roxas as the boy grew more and more worked up, rising off the couch cushions now. Riku wondered if he was going to keep yelling at him, or if he was going to cry. He looked as though he could go either direction at the moment.

Roxas was making connections. Riku hadn't expected him to do that.

"I promise," he said, below his breath, careful to keep his eyes locked on the other boy's.

"How the fuck can you promise me that?!" Roxas threw his arms out again, stressing his dire seriousness. "I remembered something, Riku. I remembered something in the bathroom. I don't know what it was, but it was in the bathroom and it was... It was pretty damn important. I feel like something big happened in the bathroom, but I can't remember what it _was_." He was off the couch now, eyes like broken glass. Riku had noticed the difference when Roxas and Sora were angry--Sora's eyes darkened to a stormy-waters blue, and Roxas's eyes sharpened into dangerous razors of ice.

"What are you talking about?" Riku murmured, hardly aware that he was still partaking in this family meeting.

Roxas let out an uneven growl, something between a groan and a hiss, but still effectively got his point across--he was mad. He was frustrated and he was _mad_. He flung an arm out as if dismissing the entire situation, spun on his heel, and disappeared down the hall. The house was silent as his bedroom door whipped closed, and it was so quiet that even the click of his lock was audible.

Riku swallowed. Stared at his feet again. Mrs. Kaimana sat frozen in the chair in front of the television, hands clasped in her lap. She too peered at the more interesting focal point of everything below her ankles.

He hadn't predicted Roxas would start to realize things didn't match up all the way. And he hadn't really considered that Sora's memories could bleed over into Roxas's mental domain. Of course, he'd never really suspected he needed to make predictions, either. He'd just gathered all the knowledge he thought he'd need on the touchy subject of multiplicity and stuff like that; he'd never expected that things would get so...disorganized.

"I'm sorry," Yuuko said softly. Riku looked up, startled.

"Why?" he asked. He felt oddly disconnected from everything, like this whole scene wasn't going down and he wasn't sitting on his boyfriend(s)'s couch, awkward and patronized and culpable, steeling himself for absolutely anything to be said. It actually felt quite dream-like, in a way. Perhaps because this wasn't the way it was supposed to be happening. This wasn't right. He was supposed to be talking to Sora's mother about having a relationship with her son, talking about all of that private stuff with _Sora_, not with _Roxas_. And that frustrated him.

"He's throwing a fit."

"He has a right to, I think."

"...God, you're right." She sighed, fingertips to her forehead.

Riku fumbled with the hem of his T-shirt, clearing his throat. It was kind of sore, raw and dry. "Look, Mrs. Kaimana, about all of this... We're not doing anything, uh...that you should worry about. I swear."

"Sure." She said it hesitantly, like she believed him but would worry either way.

"I guess I should probably explain. My side of this, I mean." Riku took a deep breath, vaguely aware that it was almost four o'clock already. "I met Sora a while ago and we started hanging out and stuff. I made him dinner sometimes."

"I remember."

"...Technically, me and Sora are going out. We're together. In a relationship. Dating. However you want to put it." God, this was unbearably hard to talk about. Riku licked his lips, cleared his throat again. It wasn't so much what to say as being able to fucking _say it_. "We've been together for... Yeah, about two months. Kairi told Roxas that we were going out together to save me the trouble of having to start all over with him, and that's how all of this got so tangled up."

Yuuko Kaimana regarded him without a word for a long, long moment. Perhaps only one minute, but it felt like eternity upon eternity. Riku spent most of it examining the hem of his shirt, for the first time not entirely certain how he'd gotten into this position in the first place. If he'd just fucking sat with those losers that one lunch period...

No. No, he could never say that. As incredibly difficult as it was having to admit to Mrs. Kaimana that he was in a relationship with Sora and consequently Roxas, it was definitely better than being Quicksilver.

"You're a real catch," she said, and it was then that Riku realized she'd been scrutinizing him again. Up and down, head to toe. He frowned, shook his head in disagreement.

"No, really," she argued. "I don't think you understand how lucky Sora is to have met you. ...Roxas, too."

"I know why Roxas is there."

She hummed thoughtfully, glanced away from him as if frightened of the very topic. That, Riku supposed, or ashamed. He sighed, straightening up further. "I'm with him because I want to be, not because I pity him."

"Christ, hon, I didn't think that at all!"

"I just...wanted to make sure you knew that."

She got off the chair and sat down beside him on the couch, reaching over to touch his shoulder. He thought of December 2, and the first real slumber party he'd ever enjoyed (for more reasons than one).

"You're a good guy," Yuuko Kaimana murmured. "And you seem to really understand Roxas. And Sora, and... and everything going on here. Maybe even more than I do."

"I guess."

"How old are you...?"

"Fifteen. I'm going to be sixteen in February."

"This is so much to put on a sixteen-year-old's shoulders, but..." She chewed on her lower lip, peering at him in poignant contemplation as he met her gaze. The next she said was spoken in low tones, as if Roxas could really hear them from down the hall in his bedroom. "Sora's therapist told me a while ago that Roxas was not willing to do hypnosis because he was afraid of blacking out again. See, when Roxas does hypnosis... it usually brings Sora back into control, but it didn't work this last time. Roxas told Dr. Ling that he was afraid of blacking out because of you. Because he didn't want to forget spending time with you."

"You want me to talk to him about it," Riku deducted, startled enough to feel abruptly disconnected again, and just when he'd begun to accept the hand he was being dealt. This was too unreal. This was like a fucking movie, not a dream. Dreams didn't have such painfully intricate plots.

Mrs. Kaimana nodded slowly, her frown something short of a little girl's. It was furtherly unsettling, that she could trust him so much when she barely knew him. Barely knew what his position in her son's life was. Riku looked down to his knees, thought of lunchtime three months ago, of Swedish Fish and the swings a few blocks away from the townhome complex he was currently hidden away in, of a checkered wristband, a carefully styled head of hair, chemistry homework, and finally of a Laundromat and bright blue eyes and a matching smile--and then Riku nodded in turn, meekly, drumming his fingers on the armrest of the couch again.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I'll talk to Roxas."

* * *

Riku had knocked on the bedroom door with the "Security Device Enclosed" and "WARNING" stickers splayed across the wood, and when he heard the lock flip open, he'd waited a moment and then slipped in to tell Roxas he was leaving. There had been no lights on, and with the shades drawn it was darker than an afternoon should have been but he'd still been able to see; Roxas had been sitting in the far corner of the room with a CD player, but the headphones were resting idly on his neck and the CD wasn't even playing. In his hand was a paperback book, a Dean Koontz novel that had the strangely worrisome title of _False Memory_, and he'd sat there and stared at Riku with weary eyes, defenses still up. Riku had waited to see if Roxas was going to get up and give him a hug good-bye, but when he didn't budge, he'd simply offered him a little wave and mumbled, "I wish you'd trust me." before he headed back out into the hall.

He walked home, needing some cold air on his heated face, but also needing some time where his mind could work its way around all the uprising within its walls without interruption. It was like a storm had blown through his head and created mayhem out of all his carefully organized deliberations, and he desperately needed a moment to stop and collect himself--to collect his thoughts.

The walk home wasn't nearly enough to get everything fully comprehensible again, and as soon as he closed the front door behind him and skirted off to his bedroom to drop his coat and shoes before starting on dinner, the order in his head that was still being gently realigned was given a good shake and rattle again, leaving his mental assembly just short of chaotic.

His father caught him at the mouth of the hallway, just as easily as if he'd grabbed his arm. Riku had been turning the corner, hands in his pockets, when his dad's voice sounded from the living room portion of the house, coarse and gruff and ineluctably dissatisfied.

"Riku, you fooling around with a _boy_?"

He nearly stumbled as he ceased all movement, eyes widening, and the first thing he thought was not _How did he find out?_, but instead it was _This is so not worth it_. He could feel his parents' eyes glued to his back and he didn't want to turn around. What he wanted to do was deny, protest, speak the fuck up, but his throat was dry and his heart was pounding and why the hell hadn't he been this nervous when talking to Sora's mother?

"You'd better answer me, son."

His father's voice was closer. He could hear the creaking of the easy chair rocking with its sudden lack of weight, just rocking back and forth, set into motion when his dad had climbed out of it and moved to stand behind his son, demanding an explanation.

"Who said that?" Riku asked, and he sounded defiant but not nearly as indignant as he'd intended.

"Some mother of some boy called to tell me that you were involved with her kid. Involved with some _boy_. You know how embarrassing that is? How aggravating it is, to just get a phone call and some lady's telling me that my boy is gay with her boy?"

Riku's jaw dropped, just barely. His spine tingled with furious chills and his shoulders scrunched up.

Mrs. Kaimana had called his dad. Called him and told him. How much, though? How much did she know and how much did she give away? Seriously, whose side was she on here?

She was worried about her son, that was all. She had little to no idea who Riku was and where he came from, and now all of a sudden she was told that he was a major part of her son's life. So of course she'd call his family. Of course she'd look him up in the phonebook and call every Hayate she found until she stumbled upon his parents.

He could _feel_ his dad's abhorred disappointment, his resulting rage, filling up the house with its intensity. He'd never before been this angry, Riku was positive of that. And that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was _why_ he was angry.

He snuck a glance over his shoulder to where his mother sat in the burnt-copper recliner, her eyes helplessly blank and just staring at the two men who meant the most to her. Just staring because now she'd been told that one of them was dating someone of the same sex. Riku almost scoffed, because he'd been sure of his sexuality for a while now, but to be forced out now, of all times, with so much on his mind--under circumstances like these...

"Do you know what happens to people who are gay?"

Riku was taken aback, part of his victimized wrath fading out just enough to allow room for his incredulity. He turned a bit, gawking at his dad. He was closer than he'd expected he was. "What are you talking about?"

His father glared at him, somewhere between a sneer and a frown. "People who are gay get AIDS, Riku. Didn't they teach you that in health class, boy?" His face softened ever so faintly, and for one solitary moment, Riku saw genuine grief in his dad's eyes. "You're a smart kid. What the hell are you doing?"

Riku was rendered speechless. Thoughtless. Could only gawk, so insulted and so shocked--

"You're not allowed to see him."

"_What_?"

"My son's not going to be fooling around with another boy, especially if it's some kind of experimental phase. I don't want you catching something and then regretting it."

"A _phase_? _Catching_ something?" Riku didn't care if his voice actually broke on that last syllable; he was just so completely astonished at the ignorance flooding from his dad's mouth. "Are you kidding me?!"

"You're not allowed to see him, or else."

"Riku..." His mother was talking now, the fucking wallflower. "We ordered pizza for dinner, so you don't have to make it."

"Yuh," his dad husked out, crossing his arms. His eyes spoke of finality, leveled sternly upon his son. "I think you'd better go to your room for a while. I'll come get you when--"

"No." Riku snorted, tossing hair from his eyes. "I'm not five years old. No way."

"Excuse me--?"

Riku shoved past his dad before he could even get his arms unfolded fast enough to snatch him. He was barely aware of how loud it was when he flung the door open and it hit the wall behind it, how sharp the clatter was when he let the screen door swing shut after him, how loud his father was as he barked for him to get back in the house. But his dad was too contemptuous to go after him; maybe if he'd had a few Budweisers in him, he would have chased his son down the road. But he didn't. He didn't want the neighbors to get the idea that he had an insubordinate kid--and that he couldn't keep control over him. So as the silver-haired boy hit the sidewalk, the man shoved his front door closed and instead turned to his wife, channeling his distaste to her because his son wasn't there to hear it. She sat in her chair and nodded, wordless and opinionless.

Riku didn't fully realize the extent of his defiance until he reached the corner where the Laundromat stood, old and forlorn, and he wasn't sure why but that was where he wanted to be at the moment. And he was the only one in the building, sitting at one of the long tables with his head buried in his arms.

* * *

**A/N: Well, that fucking exhausted me. Emotionally draining, I tell you. xD And I've got to go slam through two week's worth of schoolwork now... NakaKon is coming up this weekend and needless to say, I'm super excited I managed to get this written beforehand--to get it written, period. There's only a few more chapters left so I probably shouldn't be putting it off so long between updates. -sigh.- My apologies for being a lazy little kid sometimes. **

**Please pardon any mistakes that I didn't catch. Reviews and comments always appreciated. -wink.-**


	16. Coffee With a Friend

_**Candy Boy**_

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the amazing franchise © Disney and Square Enix; everything else © their rightful owners. **

**Ratings/Warnings: M—profanity, graphic themes, AU**

**A/N: This is, clearly, a lot shorter than usual. But there's a perfectly good reason for this: if I did the scene that follows the last one in this chapter, it would be far too long, and I have a problem with far-too-long chapters anyway. So... Here's a nice short chapter until the next one. Please pardon any mistakes or dragging. =\**

* * *

_Chapter Sixteen_

* * *

Riku remembered it like it was yesterday.

He had been standing one step inside and one step outside, half in the threshold of the stuffy Laundromat, gawking right into the eyes of the only other person using the public utility. They were eyes that had pierced right into him, wonderfully profound cobalt that seemed just as surprised and yet somehow not, staring in direct return. They had been mysteriously clouded in a fashion both casual and anxious, guarded by long, dark lashes and accentuated by a light blue T-shirt. And, like a jackass, he'd dropped his quarter.

"Do you need a quarter?" he'd asked, and that ridiculous freshman had looked like he wasn't sure what to be at the moment--amused or cautious. And, "Yeah," Riku had mumbled, less irritated than he tried to sound, "if you have one left after putting the vending machine out of service."

And the way he'd looked, the way Sora had looked while he'd switched his wet laundry to a nearby dryer, the way the light blue T-shirt had moved on his lean frame, how his thin arms managed to maneuver such a big load in only a few moments-- Riku remembered the way he'd felt then, oddly mesmerized and his chest stirring with thoughtful admirations he'd told himself were strictly observant and nothing more.

God, just the _memory_ of him.

Riku remembered it like it was yesterday, that evening he'd run into Sora at the Laundromat. It had been the same day he'd met him, brief and intriguing Candy Boy, and he had thought at that point that it was pure coincidence that he'd been doing his laundry just when Riku had to do his, what with a broken dryer and all.

No, nothing had been coincidence. Not even the fact that his dryer had finally gone kaput and he'd been putting off fixing it for quite some time. Not that he'd been going to the Laundromat to dry their clothes almost routinely by that point, not that it had been so easy to talk with the idiotic freshman in spite of barely knowing him, not even that he'd _wanted_ to talk to him. There must have been some preordained plan he was adhering to without even knowing it, because all of that was far too much to be coincidental.

But if nothing was coincidence, then what cruel power had decided to let his father shoot him down like that?

Many came and went as Riku sat at the table, arms folded beneath his chin and shifting his stare between two or three different areas--the tabletop beyond his nose, the floor between the table he sat at and the table between him and the window, and out the window across the little facility at the city there as both time and people passed by.

He counted eight people between five and six P.M., and only that many because after the lone woman with the large, bulky bags and the messy hair, a man with three children arrived and Riku had to struggle to stay in his cloud of hatred and woe and anti-world because the kids were obnoxiously loud and one had even tried to climb the machines stacked one atop the other against the far wall. After them, a young man--college, he guessed--arrived on the phone with someone and slammed the doors of the washing machine and dryer far too many times; then two sisters who couldn't have possibly been sent on the errand before, seeming a good giggly twelve and younger and completely incapable of handling the machines. Riku had gotten a little bored of fuming at humanity in general and was more people-watching than anything else by that point, and he ended up helping them with starting their load of laundry only because he couldn't bear the shrill uncertainty of their voices as they fumbled with the buttons and dials.

"Thanks!" they'd chimed in almost-unison, two little girls with blonde curls, one with red ribbons and the other with yellow. Riku had paused with his hands in his pockets, halfway to the door, and cut them a glance from the corner of his eye. They _had_ to have been ten and eleven, or at least around there, coy and innocent and chortling to each other behind their hands like no one else would hear them. And for a second, he'd wondered how the fuck they could think everything was so simple, so easy, so _good_. They had come into the Laundromat chatting and chirping because they'd been given the chance to do a chore they otherwise wouldn't have been allowed, and they were absolutely fucking _glowing_ because a stranger--a "he's cute" stranger, if Riku had heard their whispers correctly as he swung out of the building and onto the sidewalk--had helped them with their laundry before they screwed something up and were never given the privilege again.

It was just hard to comprehend, that he had once been that naïve and carefree. And to think that in just a year or two, those poor girls would have to start worrying about things like ulterior motives, hormones, and the personality glitches that kids got in middle school and high school. Assention and conformity (or the lack thereof), seven minutes in heaven and the assumptions they'd have to make to determine whether they'd have a hard time or an easy time in life. Friend problems, family problems, love problems. God, there was a sharp incline between childhood and adolescence, wasn't there?

Riku considered, as he stood at a crosswalk and waited for the pixel pedestrian to turn green and give him fifteen seconds to cross the intersection, that he was beginning to analyze things differently. That, a few weeks ago, he would have simply watched those two little girls pluck at the buttons and knobs until they figured out how to start a wash cycle; that he probably would have laughed at them and walked out as they tried to get the machine to function properly.

Maybe he'd had some epiphany over the past two months and hadn't even noticed it. That could be possible. He'd been rather...busy in the last eight or nine weeks.

Eight or nine weeks. Somewhere around sixty days, give or take a couple. Was that adequate time to change so drastically? To...grow up a little?

The smells and sounds wafting out of the corner café he passed on the other side of the street distracted him enough to get him to stop walking, and he lingered outside the glass facade of the building with his shoulders hunched against the chill of the evening, hands buried deep into his pockets. Sea-green eyes sharp only with concentration, Riku's gaze flickered up and down the scene beyond the glass windowpane, warmly lit and with a large amount of people still seated at the little tables even though it was essentially dinnertime and dinnertime was supposed to be spent at home with family.

And with that notion the last in his mind, Riku gave a gentle scoff and thought it wasn't too shabby of an idea to go inside and get a danish or something. He had a few bucks in his back pocket, left over from the breakfast he'd grabbed on his way to school that morning (he'd opted to sleep in), and a coffee shop danish sounded pretty damn good at that point. The last he'd eaten had been a shared lunch with Roxas, after all.

Oh, wasn't it Roxas he'd told about coffee shop danishes having poor nutritional value? Whatever, nevermind; he was hungry and he wasn't about to go home any time soon, so what the hell?

He was in mid-step to the door when his eye caught on a familiar face through the café's window facade, and he ceased motion and reconsidered his decision only for a split-second--because, really, what did he expect by going inside and approaching that familiar face, by walking over to that table and imposing? Did he expect a warm movie moment, silence as revelations were made and crucially severed bonds were mended?

Riku pushed through the café's iced glass door, bells jingling from the handle to announce his entry. The building smelled just as sweet and spicy as it had on the sidewalk--possibly even more--and he dodged the end of the line, diverting off to the table he had his eye set on just as the four occupants of its chairs turned recognizing stares upon him. And he'd been right, really; it wasn't a movie moment at all. Perhaps it had the potential to belong in some drama's scripted happy ending, but presently it was somewhat unreal in a very different way. A hazy way, more like he knew he shouldn't have been there but there he was and the first person to say anything was, of course, Zack.

"Riku... What's up?" Tentative, like he wasn't sure if he should even be talking to him.

The silver-haired boy rolled his shoulders in an idle shrug, glanced between the four of them and then plastered on a smile, a hardly enthusiastic quirk of the lips. Aerith was beside Zack, Cloud and Tifa on the opposite side of the table, and while Riku was somewhat grateful that Leon wasn't there, he still felt rather on edge with the tamed suspicion radiating towards him from above their hot drinks. And all at once, Riku had no idea why he'd even walked up in the first place. Because this was just too awkward, too wrong, too far below his current priorities--but it wasn't like he could just turn around and leave. That would look horribly pathetic.

"Riku...?"

Every fiber of his being tensed at the very sound of the voice, brows knotting, and when he turned to match the face to the vocals, the four sitting in front of him did, as well.

Kairi stood barely a yard away, a Styrofoam cup in her hand and her scarf in the other. She blinked, gaze dancing between Riku and the group of older kids before him, then looked to Riku again and put on her patented sunshine smile.

Riku visibly relaxed as she began talking to him, drawing the attention away from his lack of response and the intense awkwardness of his very presence, and he thought then that he had never been so relieved to have Kairi at his side. _Talk about coincidence_, he'd scoffed silently, and by the shadow cast through her eyes, he had a feeling she knew what she'd interrupted. Really, she was far too kind to him. What with eighth grade, with his attitude, with his troubled relationship with her friend, with _her_ relationship with her friend--what in the world kept her from being completely snobby to him?

"See you around," Riku grunted, nodding to Zack, then simply making eye contact with the other three, and he grabbed Kairi's arm and pulled her after him as he made his way across the café. They'd stumbled to the pastry counter by the time Riku finally felt the stares leave him, and even then his gut clenched with the instinctive knowledge that they were talking about him now, and would probably tell Leon about his incompetency, too--

"Are you okay?" Kairi asked, but she looked as though she already suspected the correct answer. Riku let out a long breath, realized he still clutched the girl's arm, and quickly whipped his hand back to shove into his pocket. Moodily, he turned his attention to the pastries behind the display glass.

"No," he huffed.

"Well, what's the matter? Because that was a pretty tense atmosphere, if you ask me. _Pre-tty_ tense--like you guys were about to blow up or something--"

"Kairi, I didn't even--"

"Are you having friend drama?"

"Not exactly."

She chewed her lip, tipped her head and mulled over the situation. Riku was vaguely reminded of Sora's expression when he considered something long and hard, and again he realized just how close Sora and Kairi really were. God, they were like fucking twins or something.

Riku shifted his weight to the other foot and pocketed his free hand, as well. "Look, Kairi, it's a long, complicated story."

"Let me buy you a coffee or something. We can sit and chat."

Kairi was staring at him deeply now, examining him, and that was a little discomfiting--and a little soothing at the same time, because she was concerned enough to try and get to the bottom of things. She was a girl, though, so maybe that was just natural for her. He sighed, unable to deny her offer as his stomach complained of its rather empty state, and then he nodded. She lit up.

"Great!" Kairi breathed, her eyes sparkling although the rest of her was quite alarmingly un-Kairi-like calm. "Great. What do you want?"

They sat across the café in the back corner, Kairi with a white mocha capp and Riku with a pumpkin spice, a cheese danish laid out between them; Kairi refused to touch it and Riku was too abashed to do anything but take a tiny bite every few minutes. It was a moment or two after Riku watched his old friends exit the café that Kairi broke the silence.

"You look just about to cry," she commented softly.

"Well, I'm not going to." Riku grunted in disdain, poking at the flaky side of the pastry with the plastic prongs of his disposable fork. "So whatever."

"No, I mean..." Kairi sighed, gathering patience to deal with the rather sullen boy across from her. "I mean, like, your face is all pinched and you're very pale. And the look in your eyes is very fragile."

"God, Kairi." He dropped the fork and leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms. "You're observant enough to be a therapist. That, or a damn good writer."

She pouted only for a moment, then giggled in flattery. He scoffed out of habit. "Riku," she murmured, pushing the humor aside and leaning forward, propping her elbows on the table and drawing her cup of coffee closer, "seriously. What's up? If it's not your friends, then what is it? Did you and Roxas have a fight?"

"Oh, he's pissed at me, but we didn't have a fight." Riku blinked a few times, as if stunned that he'd openly stated such--and that he was being entirely frank about it, too. Feeling as though his bad attitude was rather defeated by now, he ducked his head and ran a hand through his hair, bringing it out of his face only so it could fall sloppily across his temple. He wanted to talk; he really did. He just wanted to open his mouth and tell her about the whole damn day, but that was pathetic and what guy really babbled to a girl about things like coming out to your boyfriend's mother _and_ your father all at once, and about how you came out to your boyfriend's mother with someone who was also your boyfriend but wasn't the one you wanted him to be for such an occasion, and about how when you came out to your dad, it was totally not of your own volition and he thought you were disease-infested or bi-curious or utterly unacceptable or something?

Well, there was a first time for everything. That was one of society's favorite excuses, anyway.

"Okay." Riku mirrored her pose, slumping against the table and fumbling with the lid of his coffee cup. He met her gaze over the cheese danish between them and there was a moment of silence as he evaluated the situation one last time, and then she smiled and he couldn't help but smile faintly in return. "Are you good at listening, Kairi?"

"I like to think so."

"Maybe you should be a therapist after all."

"Nah. I just try to be a good friend."

His smile broadened, if a little bit, and a little bit that he would deny forever afterwards. He cut himself a big chunk of the pastry and washed it down with some pumpkin spice, settled against the table once more, and took a long, steadying breath. "Roxas was in a weird mood this morning, but I thought nothing of it. Then during lunch, he informed me that his mom knows about us. About me and _Roxas_. I was kind of shocked and then I was fucking pissed when he told me she found out through his _therapist_--by the way, did you know he was telling his shrink about us?"

"Riku, that's not just Roxas's shrink. Sora could have told him things, too. And when he does hypnosis, he has no control over what he's saying--"

"Okay, thanks, Dr. Ling, Jr. It was just a big shock, alright? So anyway, I went home with him and we ended up talking to his mom, which was completely awkward. And Roxas was still acting all pissy, but it was okay, I guess. His mom pretty much told us what I'd already heard--that Roxas just recently started talking about me, and that he admitted to really intimate things last Thursday, so the therapist brought it up to Mrs. Kaimana."

"Oh, God, Riku."

"So I'm guessing Roxas didn't tell you anything about it?"

Kairi shook her head, frowning gently and plucking at the lip of her coffee cup's lid. "No. I've barely talked to him all weekend. I thought that was weird, though, too, because he usually calls a lot. I just figured that you two were hanging out and he was too busy...?"

"Well, he probably was busy. Busy _sulking_." Riku shrugged roughly, ate another large piece of the pastry and began to talk again around the lump of danish. "Roxas freaked out then, and I mean...he has a right to freak out. Seriously. But he fucking flipped and stormed away into his room, and then it was just me and his mom in the living room which was even _more_ awkward. I bet she was thinking so many different things about us."

"Maybe. But she's Roxas and Sora's mom, Riku, so of course she would."

"Whatever." Riku stared at the cream-white of his coffee cup's lid, frowning sharply. Roxas had definitely flipped out; that was for sure. He'd challenged Riku's integrity right in front of his mother, he was so distraught. And it still made Riku's stomach twist in guilt because he knew that Roxas was beginning to realize there was something wrong. Contemplating that just made him feel culpable and sneaky, completely fake. Made him feel _nasty. _He'd never imagined he would feel so responsiblefor Roxas's distress; Riku shook his head, fingertips clammy just thinking about it. "So Roxas fucking left me alone with his mom, and I ended up confessing about me and Sora. About you telling Roxas we were going out."

"Holy crap, I hope she isn't mad at me!"

Riku chuckled dryly. "I don't think she is. She told me I was a real catch, though. And then I told her that I knew about Sora's dad."

Kairi grunted thoughtfully, tapped her finger on the side of her Styrofoam cup. When he looked up at her, she was eyeing the danish, and sheepishly snapped her gaze up to meet his as soon as she felt it. Smiling in embarrassment, she shrugged.

"Eat some," he said.

"Not hungry."

"I smell bullshit."

"No, that's just your body spray."

Riku laughed again, more honestly. "Touché. But at least try it. It'll change your mind."

"What else happened, Riku?"

He noted that she changed the subject and seriously wondered if she was starving herself, but after that he figured he was being too nosy and shrugged once again. "She asked for my help. With Roxas. To try and get him to merge with Sora."

"Are you kidding me?! She asked you to try and convince him to go away? How could she possibly think anyone could--"

"She's down to her last options, Kairi. Even I can see that. And honestly, Roxas is awesome... He's a challenge, but I like challenges. I just don't think I could pretend to love him anymore." Riku felt a chill snake along his spine at the confession, startled by the truth that rang in his words and somewhat appalled at himself. "Don't get me wrong. He's a cool kid. I like him. But it's not the same. I'm not going to fake something like that, especially if Roxas is starting to get the big picture."

"'Get the big picture'...?" Kairi's brows knotted and she craned forward, as if searching his face for the explanation.

"He's starting to see that things don't quite match up. And I think..." Riku sighed curtly, lips pressed into a thin line. He tapped his right temple, frown deepening. "I think he's getting a few of Sora's memories mixed up into his own, which means while I'm here telling him that we've done nothing farther than making out, he's getting the feeling that there's more and I'm hiding it from him."

"Oh... Goddamn."

"You took the words right out of my mouth, girly."

Kairi snorted at his abrupt, flippant nickname and took a sip of her cappuccino. "Does Sora know that you and Roxas do things together?"

"I don't know. Have you told him?"

She cast him a reprimanding glance, frowning in turn. "I wouldn't. But he knows you and Roxas are, uh, _going out_, right?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know what to tell you, Riku. I help the best I can, but I'm not a miracle worker." Her frown sharpened and Riku was struck dumb for a second, gawking across the little table at her. It was the most bitter he'd ever seen her, weary and frustrated and totally adult-like. Her angel face had matured with the crease in her brow and the angle of her lips, and it was a bit unsettling to see her so grave.

"I'm going to try and talk to Roxas," he said, nearly in a whisper. "I think maybe, with him starting to realize things, it'll work out somehow."

"Somehow."

"My story isn't over, though."

"Continue."

Riku slumped further, licked his lips after a quick sip of his drink. "I went home," he mumbled, "and between the time I left Fallridge and walked into my own house, Mrs. Kaimana fucking called my dad and told him all about it." He paused, waiting for Kairi to interject just as fervently as before, but she didn't and he looked down at the tabletop, fidgeting. "He told me he was disappointed. I could tell he was disgusted, though, and we argued back and forth until he told me that I was simply asking for AIDS. Then I left. Loitered the Laundromat. Wound up here, and then God thought he'd punish me further and you came along."

Kairi clucked her tongue, but said nothing. Riku continued to stare at the tabletop, uncomfortable and quiet and feeling the sour rage and fear all over again. Abruptly, his racing, jumbled thoughts were put to a stop as Kairi's hand landed on the crown of his head and her fingers ran through a few strands of his silver hair. And then, just as quickly as it had touched his head, she drew her hand away.

"Okay," Kairi breathed. "If I'm at all the therapist you keep accusing me of being, then I think you should seriously consider my advice. If you're going to try and get through to Roxas, I would do it as soon as possible and as sincere as possible. And the next time you talk to Sora, I think you need to admit to everything. It's not very fair to him if he doesn't know you're kissing his alter--even if it _is_ just his alter." She licked her lips, then reached forward and broke off a piece of the cheese danish, popping it into her mouth. "And as far as your dad, Riku? Fuck him if he's going to be that way." Kairi paused and stared at the silver-haired boy across from her, then nodded and finalized, "Yeah. Fuck him."

* * *

Tidus was more than happy to let him crash on his bedroom floor, but Riku could tell he was trying to remain cool about it. They talked for about half an hour after the blond had buried himself into his blankets, Riku collapsed on the floor with a pillow and a comforter, and around eleven, Riku fell asleep wondering if his dad was going to call the cops or not. Maybe he would wake up and find the police waiting outside Tidus's house, or searching the school during first period. Maybe he'd be labeled a teen runaway or something. That would be another fun twist.

Riku took the bus to school with Tidus, feeling more and more like they were back in ninth grade and times were slick again even though he was well aware that it wasn't the same. And he hadn't expected to, but he ran into Roxas in the front office after calling home to let his mother know he was safe at school (he received an earful thereafter that was so unlike his mom that it was a little unsettling) and Riku snatched him aside before the boy could get away and slip into the nurse's office.

He turned exhausted blue eyes upon him, peering at Riku through his lashes and looking far too delicate and vulnerable to be feisty Roxas. Riku frowned, hands in his pockets, and he thought then about what Kairi had told him, about his stressful night of tossing and turning and worrying, and finally, just as Roxas was opening his mouth to break the silence, he asked, "If you could choose anywhere in this city to go, where would it be?"

"The clock tower," Roxas said, without much consideration at all. "The clock tower by the old train station. I know it's not the best place to hang out, but the bad kids never go up on the clock tower."

Riku nodded, aware of the location. "Okay." He began to turn away, then pivoted back and shoved his hand into Roxas's hair, ruffling the stiff layers of it. Roxas gasped, then hissed and grumbled in disapproval as he swatted Riku's fingers away.

"Hey, Roxas..."

The younger boy frowned at the sound of his name in Riku's voice, arms crossed, but the fire was back in his eyes which was a good sign. Riku shrugged limply, a weak smirk pulling at his mouth. "If you're still headed to the nurse, you'd better feel better by this afternoon because we're gonna go hang out on the clock tower. 'Kay?"

"I just have a headache," Roxas rushed out below his breath in something like reassurance and acquiescence at the same time, and Riku noted that he was blushing a bit when he shoved past him and hurried away into the nurse's office. The silver-haired boy watched him for a moment, watched as he talked to the nurse and fetched a paper cup of water while she dug through a drawer and found him some Advil, and when Roxas glanced over his shoulder and found Riku still staring was when the sophomore finally walked away.

His plans were going to work out. Somehow. They _had_ to.

* * *

**A/N: I'm sorry for the inconsistency in chapter length, but I need to seriously STOP with the super-long chapters. I've got a problem with that and the fucking midget scroll bar even scares **_**me**_** sometimes. x\ Sorry, you guys. **

**And I'm just gonna say this right here, right now. **_**God,**_** I fucking love Kairi. xD I'm so happy I am portraying her the way I wanted to, and I'm also really happy that she and Riku are getting closer. **

**Reviews/comments always welcomed. **


	17. Free Falling

_**Candy Boy**_

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the amazing franchise **© **Disney and Square Enix; everything else **© **their rightful owners.**

**Ratings/Warnings: M--profanity, graphic themes, AU**

* * *

_Chapter Seventeen_

* * *

Around the time Mr. Hayate was insisting to his fragile wife that if her worthless boy didn't want to come home, it wasn't a problem because he didn't _have_ to come home, their truant son was sitting on the curb of a Walgreen's on the corner of Greene and Vernon, tossing a package of trail mix up and down and waiting for his pseudo-boyfriend to emerge from the drugstore with the rest of their purchases.

Riku had stopped by the office again after the last bell, called home once more and sent a quick thank-you to whatever was in control of his fate at the moment when his mom picked up the phone for the second time that day. He had been able to see Roxas's styled spikes through the front windows of the office as he told his mother he probably wouldn't be home until much later; the freshman greeted him in the airy entryway with a small, trustful smile, but Riku had been too soured by what his mother had said to offer much in return. Instead, he'd motioned for the other boy to follow, and only when Roxas came trudging out of the Walgreen's did Riku dare to bring up the topic of the tense atmosphere hanging around their heads.

"My mom told me that I shouldn't show my face to my dad again," the silver-haired boy announced with a sigh of gentle exasperation. Roxas halted at the edge of the curb, the toes of his black Converse just a few inches away from Riku's left leg. The silence as he ran through his thoughts on the matter was heavy, and after a long moment he let out a coy breath and sat down beside the older boy.

"Who the hell is she to say something like that to you?" Roxas grunted, showing his obvious and supportive disapproval on his face. Riku glanced at him, evaluating his frown. There really was a difference in his attitude since Monday night, now that Riku had invited him on something like a date--and just calling the outing such made Riku's stomach lurch. God, if only Roxas knew. If only he knew what Riku had been rehearsing in his head all fucking day.

"She's my mother, that's who she is," Riku replied beneath his breath, and smirked dryly. Roxas's concern was very endearing in a way, now that he wasn't being moody. But his lack of sulkiness was a tad alarming, especially so because he had been positive that Roxas was beginning to figure things out. Riku tossed the bag of trail mix up, caught it, then licked his lips and added, "She knows my dad better than anyone else. And I'm going to listen to her. If she's telling me not to show my face to my dad, then there's a reason. It's not because 'oh, you've shamed him, don't even come around here'--she's just letting me know that I need to be careful because my _dad_ doesn't want me around there anymore."

"That's so fucking harsh," Roxas insisted, slouching forward with a sympathetic scowl. "Why is he being like that all of a sudden?"

Riku's brow creased and he cut the younger boy a sharp look, slightly astounded by his lack of awareness. "Because your mom called and told him we were going out, or something like that. I don't even know what happened because I went home yesterday and out of the blue, he let me know that he didn't particularly care for the fact that I was with a boy. I don't think he even comprehended that--" Riku stopped there, glare dissipating as he realized he'd almost walked right into a situation he didn't want yet. _I don't think he even comprehended that I'm with the "girly boy" island kid he didn't like from the very beginning_, he'd almost said, and that was just _asking_ for the trouble of a rather confused Roxas.

"You don't have to go on," Roxas mumbled, and he stood up when Riku turned in his direction. Squinting through the glare of the sun, Riku peered up at him; his blue eyes were hooded pensively and his lips were drawn in a thin line, and Riku couldn't tell if he was still sympathetic, or if he was pissed, or if he felt guilty for his mother's actions. Or if it was something else. There was always a vacancy there, a hole that Riku couldn't fill with familiarity, because he just didn't _know_ Roxas--not all the way. In fact, he didn't even know _Sora_ all the way. There was still room to grow, and that left a discomfiting amount of holes to fill.

But he wanted to fill them, and that was why they were out today--that was why they were on their way to the clock tower, Roxas with a cold drink and a bag of Doritos, and Riku with a package of trail mix.

The tense atmosphere crept back into the air as Riku joined Roxas in standing and they resumed their walk to the clock tower, sharing sips of Sobe as they snacked--and it was almost suffocating. Riku could feel his skin grow hot and then cold, felt himself getting clammy with the overload on his nerves, and his stomach wanted to reject each handful of trail mix he swallowed--but somehow he managed to keep himself moderately composed. He'd gone over the way he wanted to approach things all day, maintained his panic subdued to a level just off of calm, memorizing the words he wanted to use so that all he had to do was take a breath and say them and get this over with as painlessly as possible. But the closer they got to their destination, the more he could feel himself slipping further and further over the edge towards becoming a big anxious tongue-tied mess. It was too hard to just memorize and recite when there were emotional connections involved.

Roxas seemed as though he were hiding a similar amount of anxiety, a bit distant and very quiet. And his lack of a bad attitude was still cause for concern. There was so much following them, silent and precarious--there was the matter of Mrs. Kaimana's treacherous phone call, the matter of Roxas's healthy deduction skills, and the ominous sensation that there was something vital building on the air.

It was a few more minutes before Roxas piped up again, ceasing the hush. He licked his lips after a hearty sip of Sobe and gestured forward, past a row of tall, narrow business buildings, the majority of which either had their windows boarded up or broken. "You see the clock tower?"

"Yeah," Riku murmured, bobbing his head in concurrence.

"Hey, I'm sorry my mom caused you so much trouble," Roxas said then, as if the topic were actually relevant. "Really. I don't know why she thought she needed to call your dad."

"It's fine." The silver-haired boy shrugged. "I'll just have to make sure I go home after he's gone to bed and leave before he wakes up, or something like that. Or just go through my window and stay in my room."

Roxas gawked at him incredulously, jaw hung slack. "You're not serious. That's... That's like some crazy movie shit. No-one ever has to do that in real life."

"Roxas, he doesn't want me around. My mom wouldn't tell me not to show my face if she didn't sincerely _not want me to show my face_. It's fine, though. It's really not that bad."

Roxas came to a screeching halt, distraught. "You--Riku-- That's practically getting kicked out of your house."

"It's not that bad. I promise." Riku stopped, frowning bitterly at the now thoroughly alarmed boy beside him. He didn't really want to think about his dad and the congruous hassle there. Not now. Not when there were bigger fish to fry.

"Riku--"

"Drop it." Riku put on a meager smile, nodding towards the clock tower, which heightened against the horizon as they drew closer and closer. "We're almost there, and we're going to have fun. So what do you do when you're there, anyway? Just sit?"

Roxas shrugged, glancing off in the direction of the clock tower. "Yeah. I guess. Riku, are you sure you're going to be okay? I can't believe she did that. That's not like her at all--"

"Roxas. Shut up."

Roxas blinked, taken aback, but Riku laughed at him and resumed walking, tossing back the last of his trail mix and then dropping the empty package in the gutter, shoving his hands into his pockets. The sound of his laughter softened the demand and Roxas felt a smile tug at his mouth. Hurrying after the older boy, he said, "So anyway, you're a real bad-ass, you know that? Seriously. Getting kicked out and not even caring."

Riku scoffed, laughed again. "Roxas, _shut up_."

* * *

They ended up taking the shortcut, instead of winding through the dilapidated neighborhood. Roxas led the way, trumping through an alley and over a dry creek bed that was filled with broken and abandoned pieces of junk--furniture, newspaper, car parts, anything that could be left out to rot in the rain and sun. The weeds grew tall and they had to climb a chain-link fence to get into the train yard, and when Roxas got stuck on a broken piece of fence wire, Riku was suddenly struck by an overwhelming amount of culpable grief.

Roxas slithered his way up the fence like a pro, threw one leg over the top, then the other, and began to shimmy down to where Riku waited patiently. But the dirty white shoelace of Roxas's left shoe got hooked on a mangled piece of the fence and he almost lost his grip, expecting his leg to move as he'd directed it to and letting out a startled squall when it didn't.

"Oh, shit!" he followed up, blue eyes wide and a distressed grimace spreading over his face. "Oh, no--" And as Riku stood, lips parted and just watching, amused and curious, Roxas jerked and shifted and tried to maneuver his way off the fence--but ultimately, in the end, he nearly fell off and Riku hastened to his rescue, snorting and laughing and reaching up to unhook the shoelace and help the other boy down. Roxas hissed and grumbled about that from the moment he yelped, "_Help me_!" to the moment his feet touched the ground and he made sure his shoelace was not frayed in any way, then crossed his arms and scowled and spat, "Thanks."

And Riku wasn't able to do anything but stare, because the sensation falling over him then was sickening and overbearing. Because all of a sudden it didn't seem as though Sora were there in front of him, but only Roxas--someone so different from Sora and yet so similar. And here they were, in a trashed old train yard where street rats loitered away the day, Roxas all flustered and candid, and Riku perhaps fifteen minutes away from essentially spitting on Roxas's very existence, right to his face. _It's like murder_, a traitorous little voice in the back of his mind had offered, and Riku could feel his expression curdling with the guilt that thought sent rocketing through him.

Roxas was just a part of Sora. He was the part of Sora that Sora had rejected after going through trauma, he was a defense mechanism, he was virtually just Sora's imaginary friend, the brave and angry boy that he could hide behind when things got too tough. And just because Riku was fond of Roxas didn't mean he _loved_ him like he loved Sora, but still, maybe it wasn't his place to demand Roxas simply go away--

No. Roxas was a part of Sora, so that had to mean that everything Roxas was--as soon as the two became one again--would still be there in Sora. Right?

"Riku, let's go," Roxas urged, waving for the silver-haired boy to follow. Riku nodded quickly, hoping that he hadn't seemed too far away in thought; he almost tripped over a broken cement block as he hurried after the boy with the checkered wristband. They tramped through the train yard, weaving around the abandoned cars and making their way to the old, vacated station the clock tower sprouted from. Roxas led him along confidently, swinging around pillars and checking in dirty windows before opening doors and slipping through dusty, neglected offices, eventually coming to the stairs. There hadn't been any bad crowd to avoid (maybe because it wasn't after dark yet), but Riku was still on edge--and going up the narrow, stuffy staircase nearly killed him. It was dusty and it was hot and there was scarcely any light, and following Roxas all the way up only made him feel worse and worse as they climbed each steep, torturous flight.

But he sucked it up.

He sucked it up because the view was beautiful at the top, and Roxas insisted they stand near the edge, and Riku figured that there was more logic in worrying about falling than there was in worrying about Roxas disappearing.

The sun was beginning to sink into its routine descent, casting a pastel-twilight glow through the grayness of the day. From atop the clock tower, Riku could see far into the distance, over the small buildings and junkyards of this end of town and out towards the center of the city. They were nearly completely across town from the coast, and the downtown skyline was barely visible in the clouds of the far horizon; if they'd continued beyond the clock tower for a good ten minutes, they would have made it to the highway and the city limits of Traverse City.

It was quiet, the breeze whispering through the tops of the trees and dusting across the sides of the clock tower. The hustle-and-bustle of the city was a faint echo, far away and almost imaginary. The streets they'd ducked through to get to the train yard had seemed relatively empty, and the ethereal hush falling over them as they stood at the top of the clock tower was beginning to creep Riku out. What on earth was Roxas doing on this side of town all the time? There was never anyone here except for the occasional beaners, druggies, or dangerous delinquents; was it even _safe_ for Roxas to be here alone?

Riku sighed softly and pressed himself further against the wall of the bell tower. He hadn't argued when Roxas had persisted there was a walkway below the bell for a reason, but he'd rather have been safe than sorry. His lashes drooped and he took a deep breath, inhaling the crisp air of the approaching evening as his fingers brushed against the masonry behind him. His nerves were beginning to set in again. He felt like he was preparing for a break-up, but he didn't really think that was a proper analogy because he'd never broken up with anyone before.

_Murder_, his mind whispered again, and he pressed his lips together in a firm line, closed his eyes fully and took another long breath. He'd told Mrs. Kaimana that he would confront Roxas. He'd told himself that he needed to confront Roxas. He'd told _Kairi_ he was going to confront Roxas. And it was time to confront him.

"What if I jumped off? Right now?"

Riku's eyes shot open, gaze rolling instinctively to the boy beside him even before his lashes had fully risen. He peered at Roxas in skeptical alarm, searched the younger boy's face where he stood--not clinging to the wall like Riku was, but nearly a foot away from the edge and with his arms spread out to either side of him. His head was tilted back and the wind so high up was tossing hair in and out of his face; his fingers danced in the air and a thoughtful look graced his features, and he looked soft and beautiful, peaceful in a way that Riku had never really seen him before.

"You'd fall," Riku finally managed, barely audible and as impassive as he could momentarily muster with Roxas contemplating jumping while so close to the edge. "So don't do it, please."

Roxas laughed lightly, let his lashes flutter to half-mast and began to drop his arms--then lifted them back up, all the way, stretched up above his head as he took a deep breath and declared, "I wonder what it's like to fall forever. To just let go of everything, fall, and be free."

Riku grunted. "Well, you wouldn't be _free_. You'd be dead."

Roxas rolled his eyes. "Figuratively, I'd be free." He smiled bleakly, arms sagging to fall about his head, negligent of the spikes he was so protective of otherwise. "_Free-fallin'..._ Have you heard that song, Riku?"

"Yes."

"It goes, 'Gonna free fall out into nothing. Gonna leave this world for a while.' Sometimes I feel like that. Like now."

"That's when you forget, right?"

Roxas stiffened, but he did not move. He closed his eyes and the peace was gone from his face, replaced by its normal amount of tension, jaw set and eyes closed and his arms folded limply across his temple. He looked as though he were trying to breathe out his negative reaction to those words--sigh it all out and take a different route. And when he spoke again, he was entirely calm. Unsettlingly so, for being the feisty boy who hated his semi-real disorder and made sure everyone was aware of that.

"Yeah. That's when I forget. I _want_ to. I just don't want to deal with myself anymore, so I forget. I fall out into nothing and I'm free for a while. _Figuratively_, of course."

Riku tensed at that, wondered fleetingly--as his heart began to race with the sensation of stumbling upon something extremely significant--if Roxas had any idea what he was saying and what it meant, and then he realized that the opportunity to bring Sora up was right there, right in front of him, handed directly to his face, and he jumped on it. He'd wonder later if Roxas was just _asking_ to be confronted, or if he was really oblivious, but at that moment, Riku saw the chance and simply _went_ for it.

"You'll never be 'free', Roxas. You're part of Sora and you always will be."

Roxas spun on his heel and for a split second, Riku couldn't breathe because he thought Roxas was going to fall off the edge of the clock tower. Just lose his footing and go sailing off the ledge, and then he'd never see Roxas or Sora ever again and his last memory of them--him--would be watching Roxas tumble towards the ground with utter surprise etched on his face.

But that didn't happen. Roxas spun on his heel, pinning a stunned expression on Riku, painfully raw and open, and then a savage glare ripped across his face and he barked, "No fucking way!"

"Way," Riku whispered, pressing himself further against the masonry behind him. He didn't return the glare; he simply stared, eyes wide and mouth in a thin line. He just couldn't summon up enough confidence to act cool and composed at the moment, and he found that he didn't really care.

"Not you, too, Riku--"

* * *

_"I'm not an alter. What the heck is that, anyway?" _

_"Bad things happened to Sora. He needed a way out. That way out is you, Roxas. You're not real. You're Sora's defense mechanism." _

_"I am real. I'm real, I'm real, I'm real--"_

_Dr. Ling wasn't compassionate enough to ignore the damages; he asked for monetary compensation from the Kaimanas, after twelve-year-old Roxas became hysterical and ravaged his office. _

* * *

"--not you, too! They got you in on this, didn't they? They all think I'm crazy! They think I'm fucking _psycho_!"

"No, they don't." Riku reached forward, unaware that his hand was beginning to waver. "No, they don't--and you're not--and Roxas, please, _please_ get away from the edge and sit down because you're making me so goddamn nervous."

Roxas ignored the outstretched hand but conceded, joined Riku against the masonry and slid down the side of it to sit with the heels of his Converse propped out over the tower's ledge. Glowering out at the world below them, he was silent for a moment, and Riku eased down beside him during the brief pause. He could _feel_ Roxas's heartache, heavy on the air and creating a palpable tension in the six inches of empty space between them. It was like a minefield--if Riku dared to move closer, something was sure to explode. And he could do nothing about it but wait for Roxas to let down the wall of dejected hostility he'd put up between them.

"I'm me," Roxas spat. "Fuck you, Riku, I'm real. So long ago, they told me I wasn't, but I _am_. Hah, I thought I'd _forgotten_ about what happened. You wanna know what happened?" He paused, but not long enough for Riku to answer. "I was twelve. I destroyed my therapist's office. I pushed his chair and threw his lamp and shoved everything off his desk, and I hit the frames off the walls and slammed the door over and over until he finally grabbed me, my mom grabbed me, and then I just gave up." Roxas smirked, bitterly. "My mom still hates me for how much that cost us." And just like that, the wry smile was gone. "Er, that-woman-I-call-my-mom, I guess I should say."

Riku shrugged, wary of where the other boy was headed like that--contradicting himself, at first defiant and then just frustratedly assenting. Had he really given up already, or was he just tired of fighting it?

"I'm real," Roxas said again; he looked at Riku, indignant, and Riku looked back, still wide-eyed. "I don't know why they think I'm so sick in the head, that I don't even know who I am or what happens to me when I forget. I don't understand."

"You're in denial about it," Riku murmured beneath his breath, confident now that he was completely correct in that assumption. "I think you _do_ understand. You just don't want to _deal_ with it, just like you don't want to deal with yourself sometimes. And then you _forget_. But I know you understand, Roxas. Deep down. So...will you at least try to? For me?"

Roxas's face changed in an instant, curdling inwards from obstinate to utterly distraught. Brows knotted and mouth drawn into a puckered frown, he looked more like a desperate little boy than a world-weary fourteen-year-old. He didn't say anything, but there was something strikingly poignant stirring in his eyes and Riku knew that it was time for the words he'd practiced to come in handy. He cleared his throat, looked to his lap, then back to Roxas. "You remember your dad?"

"A little."

"You remember what happened with your dad?"

Roxas shuddered like he did, but muttered, "Almost."

"He molested Sora. Raped him. And that's where you come in." Riku waited, in case Roxas had something to say to that. But Roxas didn't. He stared, doe-eyed and silent, and Riku could tell by everything about him that he was done arguing with everyone--and with himself, mostly. "From what I can gather, he wasn't really the best guy in the world anyway. A lot of the time, trauma like that can cause disorders like yours. That's what this is, Roxas. A disorder. Almost classic, in a way. Sora didn't want to deal with it, so he split in two and let that new half of him take on all his negativity so he could go on without the hassle of it. You're that half of him. You're his shield, just like he's yours. When he doesn't want to deal with bad memories, he takes a vacation and you step in for him. When you black out, Sora's just taking control again."

"How do you know _I'm_ not the real one?" Roxas murmured, his defiance feeble.

Riku scowled. "Roxas, aren't you making any connections at all? Aren't you seeing where I'm going with this? You're Sora's _alter_, you're the part of him he hides behind when things get too tough, you're his other half. But you have to be one again, Roxas--you have to thread yourself back together and stop denying the fact that something bad happened to you. That's what you're doing. You're trying to block out the fact that your dad hurt you, so you're pretending to be someone else."

"Of course," Roxas cried, laughing through the injured spite written all over his face. "Of _course_ I'm the wrong one. I'm _always_ the wrong one. Tch, _figuratively_ and _literally_."

Riku paused, caught his breath and felt the frown on his face deepen, and then--completely unrehearsed, too--he mumbled, "See? You're the big bundle of bad attitude that came about out of Sora's anger and self-loathing. He got _raped_, Roxas, anyone could tell you he's going to hate himself and everyone around him. But you're not the only one at fault here, I promise. I think it's ridiculous that just because Sora doesn't want to face everything, he hides. It's not fair to either of you, or to anyone around you. Which is why it has to stop. You both--fuck it. Fuck it. _You_ need to get yourself together again."

Roxas bowed his head and gaped at his hands for a moment, fingers twitching and fumbling together. The only sound was his breathing, sharp and rushed, and Riku suddenly felt rather impatient. How hard was it to understand that you just needed to get over yourself? God, he could _never_ be a therapist by profession.

"I don't think you'd lie to me," Roxas murmured, eyes flickering back and forth, from fist to fist, as images flashed behind his eyes--the bathroom, the couch, a piece of fucking candy. "But then again, I'm starting to wonder if you're even my boyfriend--or my _friend_, for that matter."

"I'm not. I'm Sora's boyfriend."

Roxas gritted his teeth, opened his mouth to shout something, but Riku cut him off.

"Just listen, Roxas. I wasn't done. Someone very smart told me that if I loved one half of you, I had to love the other half, too. And I do. So there's no problem there."

There was a brief silence then, where the distribution of realizations and connections was nearly tangible, but after a few moments, Roxas shattered the hush and choked out, "I'm going to disappear!"

Riku barely had time to comprehend what happened thereafter, as the younger boy crumpled forward and began to cry. And they sat there, Roxas sobbing and Riku dumbfounded, for quite a few seconds before the silver-haired boy reached out and ventured a hand on Roxas's shoulder. Anything more and he would have felt as though he were intruding upon something far too personal to include him.

"Roxas...?"

"I get it, okay?! I get it. I'm sick. I'm crazy. I'm just an _alter_. I get it all now, all the black-outs and all the looks and all the fights and explanations... I don't know how I was so stupid, how I didn't _see_ it all until now!"

"Roxas."

"All the times I didn't remember, I wasn't even there, hunh? God, that's so much more sensible than 'Oops, I just forgot'. How could I be so _stupid_?"

"You won't disappear. You'll still be there, all the qualities of Sora that you already are. And you'll be conscious every day, and you'll see me, and you'll be with me, and you'll remember it every day."

"Don't touch me, Riku--I'm a fucking man, I can cry without being patted on the back like a sniveling baby. Leave me _alone_!"

Riku hooked both arms around Roxas's shoulders and tugged him closer in spite of all the feeble opposition put up, holding him to his side until he conceded and burrowed into Riku's side and just...gave in. Riku waited, peering out at the train yard below. Then up, at the deepening sunset. He tilted his head, nosed into the soft spikes of Roxas's hair, and tipped his chin in to plant a meager kiss on the younger boy's temple, catching a whiff of familiarity. The scent that both Roxas and Sora shared, sweet and fresh and good. And Riku waited, waited long after Roxas had stopped sobbing, stopped trembling, stopped everything but the gentle, tired breathing that follows any good cry, and then he grunted, "Let's get out of here. Okay?"

"You must really love me," Roxas announced, nose stuffed. "The real me, I mean. You must really love me to put up with this shit."

"I guess," Riku grumbled, but he was smiling. He was smiling because he felt as though Roxas sincerely understood--that he'd broken through and redirected the course of events within Roxas's consciousness--and that was most certainly something to feel accomplished about. "Let's get out of here," he said again, thumbing a few stranded tears off Roxas's jawline.

Roxas tipped his head up and planted a soft kiss on Riku's chin, wet and chapped-lipped but still enjoyable. "You might not believe it," he whispered, "but I really love you."

Riku shrugged idly, smile fading away slowly as he panned the view below them, then glanced to Roxas through his lashes. "Nah," he sighed. "I believe it."

* * *

"I remembered everything. Well... I didn't really _remember_ everything, I just realized how things all fit together in the puzzle piece of my disorder."

"That's a good analogy, Roxas."

"Thank you. But I'm serious, I realized it all. All the holes in my mind, and all the feelings that I've been getting lately that there's more to my memories than I'd imagined... I thought Riku was lying to me, that we never did anything together during my black-outs. But he told me after we left the clock tower that because he and Sora are dating, I'm probably remembering flashes of what happened when I was Sora. Like my two sets of memories are bleeding into each other or something."

"Sure."

The office was quiet, leaving the clock ticking away and the hum of the heater obnoxiously loud. Roxas pressed his thumb into the pressure point between his ear and temple, rubbing at the slight ache that had been throbbing there all day. It was more than fucking uncomfortable, having to explain everything that had happened to Dr. Ling now that it was Thursday and he'd come to his conclusions, thought on them, and settled on his decision once and for all. It just made him feel like he still wasn't certain, even when he was. The therapist's office always did that to him, especially when the cassette player was sitting there watching him with its little red accusatory eye. It may have been signifying that the tiny machine was on and ready to go, but it was damn near creepy to Roxas.

What he didn't tell Dr. Ling--now that he'd learned his lesson, and all--was that earlier that day, after school, he'd snagged Riku right after seventh period and tugged him into the east wing bathrooms, pressed him up against the wall and given him a nice long kiss. One to remember for a while. And that, after he'd had Riku against the bland blue tile of the bathroom wall with his tongue dancing against his lower lip, Riku had eventually wound his arms around his waist and pulled him up closer, in an embrace closely related to the notorious bear hug--and that Roxas had needed to pull away for breath at one point but didn't want to, just kept kissing and pressing and clutching and, at another point, even whimpering. That, hey, get this, Dr. Ling, Riku's hands had been stroking up and down his back and teasing the nape of his neck with his fingertips, smoothing circles at his tailbone, and that they hadn't stopped for a long time until Riku had finally pulled away and took a deep breath of air and whispered into his ear, "That was the last one for Roxas."

Roxas shifted in his chair thinking about it, tugged himself away from the bittersweet sensation the memory of that scene set into motion in the pit of his belly, and he tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair a few times before breaking the silence. "I understand it all now. Why things sometimes just don't match up correctly." He paused then, brows furrowing sheepishly. "Oh, and I wanted to say sorry, again--about what I did to your office that one time."

"Mm," Dr. Ling nodded, discomfited simply by the reminder, "sure, sure. Tell me again, Roxas, how you feel right now."

"I want to be okay again." He frowned, watching Dr. Ling's hand as he jotted along the top of a sheet of paper. Roxas knew what that meant, but tried to reassure himself it meant nothing particularly _bad_. "I don't want to be sick anymore. I want to be..._complete_ again. For Riku, for my mom, for my friends--and for _me_. I have to get over this."

"Sounds like you had quite the epiphany since we last spoke."

"I guess."

"And this is how you truly feel? Not the influence of your boyfriend or whatnot?"

Roxas leveled a steady stare on the man across the room, scowling at such an idea. "I don't want to be sick anymore, Dr. Ling. I want to get better. Why the hell would I _lie_ about that?" He fell silent, letting that sink in as the therapist rose his brows and nodded and wrote, and wrote, and wrote. Roxas went on. "I'm _ready_ to get better now. I won't disappear, I get that now. I'll just be whole again. Be _myself_ instead of...a stranger. I have to put myself back together again, the right way. I can't keep running from things."

Dr. Ling nodded curtly as he finished scribbling, then reached forward and pressed the Play button on the cassette player. "Alright then. We can give it a shot. Close your eyes. Breathe. And relax."

* * *

**A/N: Sorry to be updating this so late. I wanted to post it earlier, but everything possible has been getting in my way and I've finally got a chance to sit down now that it's 11 PM. **

**Not many chapters left. At the most, there are three--but I'm expecting two. Maybe even one, if things go the way I want them to. Which, surprisingly, they have been. xD**

**Reviews always welcomed. =D**


	18. The Course of Things

_**Candy Boy**_

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the franchise © Disney and Square Enix; everything else © their rightful and original owners **

**Ratings/Warnings: M--profanity, grim themes; AU**

* * *

_Chapter Eighteen_

* * *

It wasn't anything like a movie cliché at all, not like Roxas had made it sound. He never had to _sneak into _his house (even though he'd honestly known that could have been a worst-case scenario); he just planned to solicit Tidus's hospitality until eight o'clock at night, when it was a given that his father would be suitably buzzed and thus wouldn't care much if his gay delinquent son came strutting through the front door.

Tuesday, after he and Roxas had climbed down from the top of the clock tower and monkeyed their way back over the train yard's fence, they'd returned to the Kaimana town-home and Roxas made grilled cheese sandwiches. And even though they had been a little burnt, they'd been the most delicious grilled cheese sandwiches Riku had ever tasted. Perhaps he had only been trying to distract himself from the foreign aching in his chest, but either way, the sandwiches had been good and around seven o'clock Mrs. Kaimana came home so Riku had beelined his way out of there.

In all honesty, he'd needed a longer time to walk home anyway, so he didn't mind leaving before eight. The crisp winter air on his face felt good, helped him keep the stinging of his eyes at bay, and Riku had definitely needed some time alone to think, to settle, to accept. To get over the fact that somehow he'd come to like Roxas, come to actually care for his pissy presence. But mostly he'd needed time to reassure _himself_ that everything was going to be right again, that there would be no more precarious personality switches or confusion, no more fooling and no more forcing, no more patience running thin. He almost turned around at one point, because he just couldn't leave Roxas alone all night when the maelstrom going on in his spiky head _had_ to have been much, much more daunting... But Riku needed to distance himself, because that was how he did his moving on. And distance himself he did.

He found himself distanced all the way to the park--on Woodworth, not Creek Street. And he'd distanced his ass right onto the swing-set, reconsidered, and clambered up the coil slide, tumbled down a few feet and then curled up inside the cold plastic. Pulled his jacket's collar above his ears, hugged himself and pressed his forehead against the slide's interior wall. The rubber of his Converse soles created enough friction against the smooth plastic for him to stay there, folded in on himself until it was too cold. Too cold to gawk at the smudged slide and its scraped silver bolts. Too cold to lay motionless in an empty park after sundown. Too cold to feel anything, inside or out--and therefore too cold to be melancholy.

Riku hadn't understood then, why he felt like he should cry but really couldn't. Didn't want to. What he realized later, for the second and last time--after waltzing in upon his dad and yet another Bud, a smile on his face, and heading straight for his room where he toppled into bed with the comforter hugged to his chin--was that what plagued him was not the sadness of a break-up, but the misery of a good-bye. Like he was losing someone very close to him.

Tuesday night, lying in bed, Riku had decided that Roxas deserved a sufficient good-bye, and maybe because he hadn't given him one he was hurting because he was scared he wouldn't be able to.

Tuesday night, he fell asleep around midnight.

Wednesday, Roxas was still there. Riku was just as relieved as he'd grudgingly anticipated. Wednesday they were both solemn, a little quiet and a little awkward and a little tentative to do anything but smile and skirt around the issue. Kairi had kept them laughing, though, with the notoriously skillful, dorky charm of hers. She'd saved the day more than enough times with it for it to be considered a heroic quality.

Roxas asked Riku to stay over after school and the silver-haired sophomore did, not sure what to expect and slightly apprehensive after all the times he'd been alone at the Kaimana house with Roxas. But the boy with the checkered wristband proved he had nothing to worry about, instead sprawling on the off-white sofa with Riku lounging on the opposite side, his socked toes pressing against Riku's shins and tapping absently. And they'd talked. They'd talked like two lovers who had had a passionate summer one year in their adolescence but had been drawn apart by this thing called _the truth_, and were meeting up years later down the road, reminiscing and discussing how immature and naïve they had been when they'd had their explosion of feelings. It was like that, but not exactly; the living room wasn't filled with a regretful feeling, but with something more like a humbled cousin of closure.

Roxas did not say, "Hey, remember when you and I did this?" or "Hey, remember when you and I did that?" And that's where their version of closure differentiated. Instead, the boy had peered up at the ceiling and tapped his toes and licked his lips, left hand lying on his hip and the other behind his neck, and he'd said after a long, subdued silence, "Tell me about you and Sora."

Riku had been surprised enough that he'd blushed at that, even more surprised that he openly agreed and launched into a rather mumbly monologue about he and Sora, about how they'd met, how things had progressed, how Sora acted and about Sora's emotional tectonics and about his nickname "Candy boy"; hesitantly, but casually, he went on to list the things they'd done together, from as safe as Christmas to as personal as Sora's birthday. And Roxas listened, staring up at the ceiling and taking this all in with a resignation that was not unlike that of a terminally ill patient. By the time Riku got around to confessing about the night of Sora's birthday and what had happened on the bathroom floor, Roxas had crawled forward and gotten comfortable with his cheek pressed to Riku's chest, Riku's fingers lying idly at the base of his neck where they would drift up and down every now and again, unintentionally but very soothing all the same.

"I don't want to lose this," Roxas had whispered before Riku left, after they'd eaten Roxas's favorite dinner of Hot Pockets and Coke. Riku paused in the process of lacing up his Converse; Roxas sat in front of him, cross-legged and subdued. Riku had stopped tying his shoes, sat up straight and reclined in the black chair, brows furrowing.

"Lose what?" he asked, not more than a whisper either.

"This," Roxas repeated. "I don't see why I would...but, I mean, I just can't even imagine what it will feel like. To go into hypnosis and come out..._fixed_." He'd said the word with his brow knotting deeply, like it had burned his tongue upon exit. "I just... I don't want to go away completely. I want to feel this, every day. I don't want to be alone in his head."

"You're acting like you're two different people," Riku had corrected him, propping his chin in his palm. "You're not. You're not going to go away completely, you're not going to be alone in his head because it's _your_ head, too, Roxas. Unless you, like, I don't know, keep two different heads in that split-down-the-middle closet of yours."

Roxas snorted, declared that Riku was clearly very upset because his sarcasm wasn't even making sense, and then Riku had stuck a hand out, Roxas had taken it, and he'd held the younger boy in a tight hug for a moment before he went back to tying his shoes.

Roxas was smiling when he closed the Kaimana door.

Thursday, Riku gave him a sufficient good-bye. Why, if he wasn't disappearing completely, they were both still thinking in terms of _good-bye_ and other such finality-laced items, he didn't know. Either way, they kissed. Nice and long, tender and honest, in the school bathroom before Roxas hurried home to get ready for his hypnotherapy appointment. And then Riku had gone to the railroad tracks--not at the abandoned clock tower, but where he and his old friends had once been busted for breaking curfew. When he'd stumbled through the foliage and gravel and emerged on the tracks, he'd nearly gone right back through to the other side. He hadn't expected anyone to be at their old hangout, but Leon was there and he was smoking, and Cloud crouched beside him in mid-sentence. They'd all stared for a lengthy moment, and then Leon had murmured, "Don't leave, Riku. We don't bite."

Thursday evening, as twilight crept across the city and the sky darkened, clear enough that stars were visible, Riku sat down on the railroad tracks with gravel crunching beneath his Converse, knees to his chest and head on his arms; Leon stooped down and smashed his present cigarette into the metal rail, lit another, and both he and Cloud sat down across from the huddled silver-haired boy, resuming their muttered conversation. And the hush around the tracks was not in any way rude or segregated as Riku sat and the other two went on talking amongst each other; it was something assuring, something unspoken and unnamed, but somehow subtly contrite.

* * *

"Well, isn't _this_ a big difference from last night."

Sora jumped, startled that his mother was awake before he headed off to school. Usually on her days off, she slept in until around eight. Turning from the counter with a mouthful of chocolate cereal in his mouth, he blinked, the cardboard box in his hand and the guilty fingers still curled on a palmful more of cereal. "Hey, Ma," he managed around his half-chewed food, watched as she ambled around the kitchen aimlessly, then shuffled back out to the living room to plop down on the sofa and rummage through the CDs he had dragged out of the basket beneath the coffee table.

"Oh, God," she sighed, running a hand through her disheveled hair and lifting an empty CD case, gaze flicking along the back of it. "This song is so depressing... What are you doing listening to it, sugar?"

Sora scoffed, cocking a brow as he peeked at his mother from above the fridge door, free hand fishing amidst the contents for the milk carton. "'Swing Life Away' is depressing? I think it's uplifting."

Mrs. Kaimana sniffed lightly, not at all judgmental but just contemplative. She leaned back against the sofa cushions, tucking one leg up beneath the other, and tapped her fingernails on the CD case as the song continued to play.

It dawned on Sora then, and as he was returning the milk to the top shelf of the refrigerator, he almost hit his head on the freezer as he shot upwards and cried, "Oh, Mom, did I wake you up? With the music?"

She shook her head, waved him off and kept tapping her fingers in time to the song's acoustic strum; Sora frowned, leaned back against the kitchen counter and ate his cereal, noted how groggy his mother still looked and how she stared off into space as she slowly acclimated to being awake and functioning again, and as he acknowledged that she was humming to the song, a small smile perked at the corners of his mouth. Sora cherished mornings like these, placid and warm, just his mom and him and their joint cases of bed head. The house was quiet and still--except for, of course, the CD playing and the crunching of Sora's cereal--and from behind the couch, the blinds were open to allow early morning light through, filling the living room with the pale glow of post-sunrise.

"What do you mean?" Sora itched his nose, spoon held delicately in his fingertips as he did so. A drop of milk fell off the end and plinked back into his cereal.

"Hunh?" His mother glanced up at him, perplexed. "What do you mean, what do I mean?"

"About a big difference from last night."

She hummed again, reaching forward and putting the CD down on the coffee table. "I don't know, babe. You just aren't usually this peppy in the morning."

Sora felt his cheeks burn, wondering if she had witnessed him singing beneath his breath or something like he had been before he heard her in the hallway. "Peppy," he reiterated, as if disagreeing.

"To be honest, I thought I'd have to drag you out of bed--or at least call you in sick. Are you feeling better?"

The brunet swished his spoon around in his cereal, watching the milk slosh and the Count Chocula pieces bob. The song ended and the last track on the album began to play. He saw where she was coming from now, commenting on the difference from last night. _Last night _he'd felt utterly sick to his stomach, could barely make it from the car to the couch after therapy without his vision beginning to fade out to black; he'd had such a horrible headache, a massive bout of dizziness, and it had been very hard to comprehend anything because he felt half-asleep and therefore his head wasn't catching up with much. He'd been mad, he remembered that, though. He remembered that the first thing he said when he walked out of Dr. Ling's office and into the waiting room was, "I want to see Riku." But he'd nearly tripped going down the stairs and he just felt too detached, so by the time he was curled up in the passenger seat with the street lamps sending waves of artificial light over him as they drove back home, he'd taken back his statement and claimed he would just see Riku at school, that hopefully he wouldn't be worried about him. His mom hadn't replied to that, but simply stroked his hair with one hand and drove with the other.

His mother was waiting for his answer now, not Thursday night but Friday morning, and she sat on the couch with one hand on her knee and the other tangled in her own hair, watching him with a bit of concern in her eyes. Sora feared that her constant worry would never go away, no matter how much progress he made away from the throes of his disorder. That, inevitably, they'd both be scarred and nothing would get better over time like Dr. Ling had promised.

"I'm feeling fine," he murmured in response, and offered her a quick smile to sell the idea. Finished shoveling in his breakfast to the last seconds of _Siren Song of the Counter Culture_ and dropped his bowl in the sink, sending her a thumbs-up on his way to his room, hoping his favorite shirt was clean.

* * *

Riku kissed him, right there in the hallway Friday morning. In front of everyone. At the top of the stairs. Didn't even care that Sora was saying something to him, just walked up, grabbed him by the hips, jerked him forward, and slammed their mouths together in a hasty kiss. They weren't heckled outright, but there were a few comments made by perhaps three students as they passed by; Sora was capable of nothing more but staring for a few seconds, trying to pull away but proving unsuccessful, and finally just backing up against the wall and kissing Riku back until the silver-haired sophomore found it fit to break away.

"You've eaten candy," Riku stated, barely above a whisper and looking absolutely shocked by the current chain of events--even though they had been his actions in the first place.

"I have," Sora confirmed, gawked back just as innocently and licked his lips, wondering if he still tasted that strongly of Swedish Fish.

"Candy boy," Riku mumbled then, not really seeking his attention but just saying it to hear it. Sora smiled, sliding his thumbs into Riku's hip pockets and wiggling them absently. He thought that Riku being bashful was absolutely... What? Adorable? He couldn't really associate Riku with the word _adorable_. He was more _quaint _than _adorable_, and he made him grin.

"I almost wore my checkered wristband today," Sora announced, "just to fuck with you."

"Ah." Riku nodded, and even though he wasn't smirking, his eyes were. "See, that's the Roxas in you trying to be a brat again."

"Alright, let's go." A teacher, looking entirely awkward but trying to remain unbiased, waved them forward as he came up the stairs and stumbled upon their embrace, and he continued to wave until the two had separated and attempted to appear unaffected. "Move along, boys. Get to class. There'll be time for this afterwards, I swear."

And there _was_ more time for it afterwards. Riku wouldn't let go of him all through lunch. He insisted they go to the hallway on the second floor, to be alone--so they sat on the floor beneath the window where one rainy Thursday, they'd exchanged telephone numbers. And Riku wouldn't let go of him. Kept his arm around his waist, kept his chin propped on his shoulder, and they shared Sora's lunch of a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, Doritos, and a Coke.

* * *

Saturday morning, Sora felt confident enough that things were getting better that he cleaned up his room. He turned his radio on and blasted it as he unpacked the boxes sitting against the walls, digging through his things and pulling out all the items that Roxas had shoved away in denial. One box contained a few zip-up hoodies he'd been missing for a while, another a stack of spiral notebooks from earlier sessions of therapy and pictures of his family from as far back as when they'd lived on the island. He found his old Donald Duck Pez dispenser, the one he'd gotten from his father when they'd gone to the boardwalk years ago, and frowned at the fact that he'd been looking for it for so long and the whole time it had been in the lower nook of a neglected cardboard box. He also found a bag of lollipops he'd forgotten he'd shoved in his desk drawer, and happily popped a lemonade flavored sucker in his mouth as he pulled all his dirty clothes into a pile for laundry later on, tossed his black Chucks into the closet, and then set forth to conquer the mess around his desk.

* * *

Things weren't completely back to normal--not that they ever had been _normal_--and the shift from _old_ normal to _new_ normal was anything but smooth. There was a tentative awkwardness about it all, everyone constantly on the edge of their seat and pondering everything Sora said, contemplating if there were deeper meanings to such simplicity, wondering if the brunet was backsliding, frightened that something was going horribly awry within Sora's fragile-but-mending psyche. But other than those unspoken, unacknowledged anxieties, things were indeed _getting better_. The first few days were rough, the peak of the aftermath, the unnerving but relieving sensation of change heavy on everyone's shoulders--but most of all on Sora's, who was unable to put his finger on what exactly he'd gone through Thursday evening but could only keep saying what his therapist had said. _Things will get better_ _with time_.

"I don't feel any different," Sora had said on Sunday, sitting on his kitchen counter as Riku made them sandwiches. "If I _am_ different, I can't tell. I just feel more relaxed. You know how it feels when school is out and it's summer time, and you've got nothing to worry about?"

"Yeah. Ketchup or mustard?"

"Ew, ketchup, definitely. But yeah, that's how I feel. _Relaxed_. Not confused, not stressed. Do you think that's a bad thing? That I feel great?"

Even if Sora didn't notice, Riku did. He noticed every subtle change in Sora, the latent chains finally linking together. It was still Sora--God, yeah, it was--but every now and again, when they ate lunch with Kairi (Selphie found herself a boyfriend and therefore had migrated away from their table, leaving just the three of them), or when they walked in the hallway (he'd held Sora's hand the Monday following his return to consciousness), or when they just hung around in Sora's living room, his newly arranged bedroom, or outside at the park... After a week of noticing, Riku finally realized what those little nuances were, and the recognition unsettled him in a compassionate kind of way. Because the little changes in Sora were Roxas--certain sarcastic quirks, movements, gestures, and expressions that Riku had before associated with a pissed-off kid wearing a checkered wristband, layers of messy hair tossed to one side. Perhaps they had been Sora's quirks all along, but to Riku they were purely Roxas. And seeing those qualities in Sora hit the reality of the entire situation straight to home for Riku. Made him stop and blink and have to regather his composure after a moment of consideration, because it made everything feel less like a lengthy, twisted game and more like real-life.

It only felt more real as time passed, solidifying that Sora was no longer two separate personalities from an idea to a fact. He didn't stop going to therapy sessions every Thursday, but it seemed that the more he went, the more clear it became that Roxas had conceded and Sora was, actually, _getting better_.

* * *

"It's freaky," Kairi told Riku two weeks and two days after he'd been at the clock tower with Roxas, a Thursday evening they were wasting at the mall's food court together, waiting for the hour to be seven o'clock so the third member of their posse would be free from the grasps of counseling yet again. "I've seen him go into one of those trance things before. It's _freaky_."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. He kind of droops down...hangs his head and goes limp, but if you look at his eyes they're still open and every now and again they flicker back and forth. Really fast, just right-left-right-left. Then they're still again."

"...Mm-hnm."

"It's like rapid-eye movement or something, his mom told me."

"When did you see him get hypnotized?"

"A long time ago, when Dr. Ling was going to the house instead of Sora going to see him."

"Why did he--"

"Because when they first started therapy, Sora wouldn't leave the house. He refused."

"Oh."

Riku fell for Sora all over again when Sora laughed and told him that he still had the individual Swedish Fish they'd made a promise on, weeks and weeks ago.

Sora loosened up. He seemed comfortable, he seemed happy, he seemed--like he'd speculated before--_relaxed_. And while he had been eager to get physical with Riku before, a week or so after he'd regained control of his consciousness, he was _more_ than eager.

They were both teenagers, after all. And as things continued to _get better_, Sora was eager to exercise his passion for his boyfriend. Sweet kisses often (when alone, of course) became hungry lip-locks, and hips rocked and fingers curled and Riku most definitely took advantage of having to stay out of his house until the safe hour of eight o'clock.

* * *

January ended and February began. And things were officially better. Not perfect--things were never perfect--but compared to how they had been, things were definitely better.

* * *

"I hate the city bus."

Sora rolled his eyes around to regard Kairi through his lashes, exasperated with her complaints already. Sighing with continually thinning patience, he mumbled, "Well, you ride it more than I do, so what's the problem with it all of a sudden?"

"I've _always_ had a problem with it." She chewed her gum and gave him a look that meant he clearly should have been aware of her distaste for the bus already. "It's just that I don't comment on it constantly. That, or you're never on it with me so you don't _notice_ my problem with it."

Sora bobbed his head absently, idly accepting this explanation. "It's cold and rainy out, so deal with it. We're almost there."

Kairi blew a bubble and when it popped, drew it back into her mouth with her tongue. Sora watched, cheek propped in his palm. Beside her, another passenger shifted around, bumped into her shoulder and didn't seem to notice. She eyed the inconsiderate stranger in disgust, scooting closer to Sora and hugging her little backpack tightly to her chest.

"I hate the city bus," she said again, glaring at her feet.

They got off at Fred Meyer, two kids splashing across the parking lot and shaking the water off themselves in unintentional synchronized movements once they were under the protection of the store's entrance, laughing at each other and how wet they both were simply by dashing for the building.

It was Wednesday, February 10. Riku's birthday was on Friday.

Their tennis shoes squeaked as they made their way across the store to the baking goods, Sora's house key jangling on its lanyard as he swung it around, other hand in his pocket. Kairi was distracted by every shelf of candy she saw, pointing out which treats she was really craving.

"I'm not feeling like candy," Sora sighed, turning down the baking goods aisle and swinging his key.

Kairi's jaw fell and she screeched to a momentary halt, before hurrying after him and grasping his arm, jerking him to a stop as well. "_What_?"

Sora blinked, a little startled by her unexplained aggression. "I'm...not feeling like candy."

"Are you sick?!" She didn't wait for an answer; she slapped her palm to his forehead and he scowled, pushing her hand away.

"Ow," he murmured, rubbing at his head. "No, I'm not sick. I just don't really want a lot of candy anymore."

"At least get some Swedish Fish. _At least_."

"That way you won't feel so bad about getting five Hershey bars?"

Kairi pouted, genuinely upset that he'd caught on to her. "No. Because it's abnormal that you don't want candy. So please get a box of Swedish Fish?"

"Fine. Now help me find some good cake."

Kairi dropped the candy issue, and instead went on to ramble about how adorable Sora was, wanting to make Riku a cake for his birthday. Sora retorted with a grumble of, "Not like anyone else is going to worry about his birthday." Kairi clucked her tongue but agreed, and continued to assert her claim that the brunet was absolutely and undeniably adorable. Why? Sora asked; Because, Kairi replied. Anyone in love is adorable. Sora proceeded to huff and grumble about that stereotype being completely false, then snatched a devil's food cake mix and grabbed a bag of Swedish Fish on their way to the cash register--but the essence of warm sibling taunting that graced their conversation promptly shattered as Sora ducked away from one line and hurried to a different one.

"What's wrong with that register? There was practically no line," Kairi insisted, trying to catch up with him.

"The cashier running it."

"What about him?"

Sora shrugged, skirting around the corner of a magazine rack and joining the line at register thirteen. "It was Riku's dad."

* * *

Sora drummed his fingertip upon his chin, free hand propped on his hip. Kairi rocked back and forth beside him, looking around the bookstore and waiting for the brunet to make his decision.

"I'm not sure which to get," he said, sounding quite aggravated and looking from choice to choice. He'd set the two books he'd found up against a shelf and was deliberating between one or the other with a large amount of difficulty. "Which do you think Riku would like more?"

Kairi tucked some mahogany hair behind her ear and turned to examine the books, hip cocked out to the side and foot tapping in thought. "Hnm... He likes to cook, right? So the cook-book is a great idea. But he also likes a good read, so the Dickens is another great idea..."

"I know... That's my problem here."

"Uhh... Okay, both."

Sora blinked, brows furrowing. "Hunh?"

"Both. I have money, too. We'll pool it, and you can give him both."

"Kairi, you don't have to do that--"

She shrugged, putting on a look that very much resembled a motherly mask of loving indifference, grabbed the books and headed for the front of the bookstore. "Come on, Sora. Let's go."

He trailed after her, trying to persuade her to stop with as much sternness in his voice as a whisper would allow. "Kairi--Kairi, seriously--they're so much--why are you doing this?"

Kairi spun on her heel and scowled at him as he almost ran into her, baby-blues wide in innocent shock. "Why am I doing this? You really just asked me that? What, so I can't give Riku a birthday present, too? You said earlier, it's not like anyone else is going to care about his birthday."

Sora's brow knotted further and he tipped his head to the side, reached for the books tucked in her arm. "But you guys aren't really that close, you don't _have_ to give him anything. You barely know him. Right?"

She guffawed, honestly offended, and snatched the books back to her bosom. "How can you even _say_ that? Really, how? Trust me, I _know_ Riku. I knew him before, and I know him now. _Trust me_, I _know_ Riku Hayate."

"What do you mean, you knew him before and you know him now?" Sora reached for the books yet again, scowling in turn.

Kairi shrugged roughly, hugged the books to her other side to keep them out of his reach. "He _was_ a prick, but _now_ he's just a stupid boy. I've had many good talks with him, so I like to think that maybe we're just a tad bit close by now, that I know him a little bit by now. Oh, and he's a good guy, really. In fact, I bet we're on the level of _friends _by now, if you haven't noticed. So I'd like to give him a gift, too. If you don't _mind_."

"...Holy shit, Kairi, you used to like him, didn't you?"

"Nothing gets past _you_, Sherlock."

Sora recoiled as if she'd smacked him, blinking rapidly and gawking at her. He'd never seen her so frustrated, so _intense_. She stood in the mouth of an aisle of bookshelves, books cradled in her arms and a sharp glower set on her face. She looked older than the Kairi Sora was accustomed to. But more than her rather intimidating presence, he was shocked that he hadn't known about all of this before. He wasn't suspicious of any budding friendship--no, not at all. More or less, he felt a little...stupid.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, pulling the books out of her arms. Kairi didn't resist. Her hands fell away, limp. "You knew him before? And you guys have talked? Like, not around me? I didn't... Kai, I've been so oblivious of everything. I'm so sorry."

She shrugged, impassive. "It wasn't your fault. You were...sick."

Sora felt his stomach drop, knew he wanted to do_ something _to get rid of the shame and the guilt and the patronized fury bubbling in his chest, but didn't know if he wanted to get emotional about it or throw a tantrum. Instead, he tried to keep his voice level, throat raw as he demanded, "How can you be so cool about it?"

Kairi shrugged again, lowered her gaze to the books now in Sora's hands. "I couldn't be anything else about it, Sora. You're my best friend. When you got sick, I took care of you. Like when we were in third grade, when you had that really bad cold and your mom had to work--so you stayed at my house and I took care of you all afternoon. Remember that? I was cool about that, and I was cool about this."

"Those are two totally different situations, Kairi--you can't even compare them. I haven't _been_ there for you, and you've been there for me during _everything_." Sora turned, slid down to a crouch and leaned back against the bookshelf. He took a slow breath, trying to soothe the pinching in his chest. Kairi simply stood by him, staring now down at her feet. Her hair fell across her eyes, having come loose from her bright green bobby pins after all the running through the rain. "I don't even know how you're doing with your dad, Kairi. Or your mom. Or... Or how you're doing with school, and friends, and _life_."

"Not true. We talk all the time."

"But lately, it's been nothing but...but _me_."

"...Yeah."

"Well, don't agree! Now I feel worse!"

Kairi slid down to crouch next to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulder while he hung his head, knocking his forehead into the books a couple of times. "Don't feel bad."

"And on top of all that, you liked Riku and then... Oh, fuck, Kairi. Fuck this. Fuck _me_."

She smiled, almost giggled but didn't. Still felt a bit too cowed. Instead, she patted his arm softly. "I don't think Riku would appreciate that, but you're definitely fuck-worthy, Sora."

"Why are you still my friend, if I'm never anything but a hassle?"

"Because you're not just a hassle. You're my best friend. Geez, I don't _hate_ you, Sora. You're not just one big problem. I have fun with you, you know. I mean, yeah, the whole DID thing...was hard to bear but I took care of you because I'm here for you like that. And hey, it's worse for you than me, so don't feel bad. Oh...and, um...about Riku? I liked him a while ago. When we were in seventh grade." She chewed her lip, mulled over whether or not she wanted to go on. After a long moment, she did. "I asked him if he wanted to go out. He turned me down. In front of all his friends and everything."

Sora groaned softly, buried his face deeper into the books in his arms. He felt _more_ guilty now, on Riku's behalf. And it had been in seventh grade, when all the shit had been hitting the fan and he'd been painfully oblivious to _everything_ because he was constantly in a state of chaos, unraveling from the inside out-- "Kairi, I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. Look, I'm going to end this discussion now, okay? Don't be sorry. Everything is alright now. You're my best friend, so no matter what, I'll take care of you, just like I'm positive you'd do for me."

"I would. I _will_."

"It wasn't your fault that you didn't realize things. But you get it now, which is good, right? I think...that maybe it's time for all of us to move on. You know? We all need to get over the past and accept the present."

"You're a fortune cookie all of a sudden."

"I'm serious, though. We're all different from how we were before--Riku's not a heartless prick, I'm not a sniveling little girly-girl, you're not a violent, emotional textbook example. All of that was _before_, so it shouldn't be holding us back. We should be happy where we all are right now."

Sora was silent, gawking over his knees at the shelves across from him and letting her words sink in, soaking it up for a lengthy moment. Finally, he held the cook-book out for her and stood up, fumbling with the edges of the Charles Dickens novel he still held. "You're right," he murmured, unable to look away from the toes of his red Converse just yet. "Absolutely, one-hundred-percent right."

Kairi stood as well, slowly, a bit anxious of Sora's current mood and trying to read the shadow over his face. But it was difficult with his head hung, and she felt a little bad for pushing so much off onto him that she hadn't expected to ever tell him, but finally Sora lifted his face and looked at her with such genuine emotion in his eyes that she melted into a smile and actually had to blink a few times to keep from tearing up.

"So here's the run-down." Kairi sighed, changing the subject and ending their _moment_ as they headed for the cash register, because if she didn't, she might seriously cry. "My dad's got a girlfriend and he's still a workaholic. My mom has finally decided to start dating, too, but she's more into religious guys now. Selphie and I aren't so close anymore, but--and you'd never have guessed this--Riku's friend Tidus's girlfriend Yuna has been talking to me a lot lately and I think she'd make a great best friend, too. What do you think of _that_ Sora? You're my best friend, your boyfriend is also my friend, and _his_ friend's girlfriend would be my other best friend. We'd have a pretty tight crew, if you ask me."

It was still pouring when they left the bookstore.

* * *

**A/N: askgj;elajlksa 3;alskj--WOW. I finished this around the end of May, but I had no internet connection until now. Which royally sucked. I'm so sorry, guys. The one time I'm actually ready to update in a relatively structured schedule... And then I don't have internet. x\ **

**Reviews/comments always welcomed. :D**


	19. Glycerine

_**Candy Boy**_

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the franchise © Disney and Square Enix; everything else © their rightful and original owners. **

**Ratings/Warnings: M--profanity, adult themes; AU**

* * *

_Chapter Nineteen_

* * *

Riku was suspicious.

But more than that, he was nervous.

And on top of that, he was a little irritated but managed to remain nonchalant as he hurried back and forth between his bedroom and the bathroom, searching for the T-shirt that looked the best on him.

He was suspicious because Sora had called him Friday and asked what he wanted to do for his birthday. Riku told him, offhanded and absent and not suspecting anything yet, told him he wanted Tidus and Wakka there, wanted to eat at the pizza place by the mall, the one that had the really good Greek pizza, and just hang out all night. Sora had said that sounded fun, lingered on the phone for a moment, in which Riku heard Kairi laughing at something in the background, and then Sora had claimed he needed to go to the store and he hadn't called back until ten o'clock that night. And just a few hours ago, before the nerves had set in on such a fine February Sunday, Sora had called again and instructed Riku to meet him at the pizza place by the mall at three.

Riku was nervous because he wasn't sure what Sora was up to, just certain that it was something. And the infinite amount of _something_s that Sora could possibly be up to made him anxious. Excited, but still anxious. He wasn't used to people doing _something_s for him.

Riku was irritated because once he'd expressed to his parents that he was going to do something with friends for his birthday, they'd obviously felt no need to do anything special on their end. He'd woken up to obligatory appreciative smiles and an awkward pat on the back, right between his shoulder blades and hard enough to knock a sigh out of him; then he'd made breakfast for the three of them and pushed himself to eat with them in the living room. They'd given him a birthday card with a twenty-dollar bill in it, and he'd nodded and thanked them and slid it into his pocket and thought to himself, _That's what family does when they don't honestly give a shit about a relative's birthday but want to do something to prove they remembered it_.

But whatever, nevermind, that was all done and fine and Riku had hopped through the shower at two, and his hair was still damp and he was getting even more nervous now that it was twenty minutes until three and he as of yet had to decide on which shirt he looked best in. By a quarter to three, he settled on a black long-sleeved shirt and shoved the sleeves up to his elbows, snapped the leather band he'd gotten from Sora on his left wrist, clasped a thin metal chain around his neck (he wore this only on the most special occasions), and made sure his shoelaces weren't hanging out. He gave himself one last look-over, raked his fingers through his hair and hoped it would look this cool when it dried, then practically dashed to the front door while tipping his parents a wave.

"You look nice," his mom said when he was halfway out the screen door, and Riku had to pause because he hadn't expected to feel so warmed by his mother's praise. Swallowing on a suddenly dry throat, he squinted at her through strands of damp silver hair and his fingers twitched where they gripped the metal frame of the screen door.

"Thanks," he murmured, not sure why he was so affected by her smile and her candid approval of his appearance. "I'll be back later..."

"Take your jacket," she said next, and it was the most authoritative he'd ever really heard her.

"Yeah." He obeyed, leaning across the threshold and grabbing it off the back of the shoe-rack (which had become more of a newspaper rack, but this was beside the point). "I'll be back later."

"Have fun," his mother called as he drifted out onto the porch, and he managed to scrounge up a quick, tentative smile in return before closing both doors and making the fastest, most non-wardrobe-destroying sprint for the bus stop. He could serve to be fashionably late, but it probably wouldn't be best to be _too_ late, and at this rate, he'd be there by a quarter after three. One day, he vowed, he wouldn't have to rely on public transit. One day he'd be able to maintain his own transportation.

* * *

"It's alright, he's with me. Come here, come here! Everything's back here--I got us a huge table and everything. Just wait. You'll see why. Holy shit, Riku, it's awesome. You're going to love it." Endless blue eyes clouded briefly, searched Riku's green ones as Sora tried to discern the look crossing the silver-haired boy's face. "Hey, what's wrong? Is that just your shock face? It's obvious you've never had many surprise parties. Maybe you should practice that. The proper look of grateful disbelief could be useful in your future."

Sora's fingertips dusted the underside of Riku's as he gingerly took his hand and led him past the hostess, giving her a broad smile and a little thank-you beneath his breath. And Riku simply followed, what Sora had dubbed as his rather inadequate shock face still creasing his brow. He'd been suspicious and nervous and irritated earlier, then suspicious and nervous and discomfited on the way to the restaurant, and suspicious and nervous and downright confused as he stood in the entryway for a few moments before Sora had come stumbling forward from beyond his peripheral vision, halted the hostess's questions, and bombarded Riku with a bright smile, flushed cheeks, and a devious spark in his eyes.

But none of the shock from that could measure up to the shock he felt upon passing filled booths and tables only to enter the secluded corner where the surprise party was being held and acknowledge the fact that around the large table sat his friends. On one end was Kairi, next to her Yuna; beside Yuna was Tidus, and then Wakka, who had his arm around Lulu; and on the side of the booth opposite Kairi, there was enough room for Sora and him to sit down.

Vaguely, Riku picked up on the restaurant music humming overhead, on speakers tuned to the lowest volume, there but faraway, to set a mood and not to distract. _Whoever runs the stereo hooked up to the speakers has great taste_, he considered transiently--but beyond that thought, somewhere in the back of his mind, he felt that Bush's _Glycerine_ playing as he was led into his surprise birthday party was something a bit more than coincidence, a bit more than the setting of a mood.

He noticed then that everyone was looking at him, and everyone looked somewhat startled. He could feel a heat pooling around his ears, so, flustered, Riku pulled his hand from Sora's and shoved both into his pockets, announcing, "Alright, look, I know my shock face is appalling, but seriously, cut me some slack, you guys."

And, ultimately more powerful than the restaurant's choice of background music, that set the mood.

The secluded booth filled with laughs and comments of agreement, and Riku glanced at Sora from the corner of his eyes, smirking gently. Sora felt him looking, cut a glance in return and broke into a wide smile, much like that of a proud little boy who had pulled off the most amazing stunt in the world; after that exchange of eye contact, Sora ushered Riku to sit down so the party could really get started.

"Yeah, we're starving, sit down," Kairi chimed in, plucking at her straw. She beamed, Riku noted as he slid into the booth. She was radiant, and it wasn't a facade this afternoon. He wasn't sure why he noticed the change, but somehow he found it significant.

"Hey," Tidus drew Riku's attention as Sora ducked down to rummage in the bags that had been hidden at the foot of the booth, "so, like, we can order whatever, right? Or does date etiquette apply here? Because if that's the case, I'm ordering the most expensive thing on the menu, baby, and you can pick up the check."

Riku raised his brows. "I don't know, I--"

"Nah, get whatever you want, Tidus. I told you, I'm paying." Sora stood, set a foil-wrapped baking dish on the edge of the table and moved restaurant advertisements out of the middle, making room to set whatever it was he'd pulled out in the very center of the booth. "Oh, yeah. Just out of curiosity, for later, uhh, does anyone have a lighter?"

A cake. Sora pulled the foil off the top of the baking dish and revealed a home-made cake, and Riku slumped back into the cushioned seats of the booth, speechless. Wakka chortled at his reaction and Lulu withdrew a purple lighter from her pocket, handing it to Sora. Sea-green eyes lucid as he took it all in, Riku gawked at the cake. At Kairi, across the table from him and grinning like the Cheshire cat, her hair not in bobby pins or barrettes today but simply tucked behind her ears. At Yuna, beside her, looking as polite and innocent as always, smiling with her arms folded on the tabletop as she looked the menu over with Tidus. At Tidus, lacking the Zanarkand logo and instead looking quite formal in a plain blue T-shirt, his charismatic eyes settled now on the vast amount of choices for dinner. At Wakka, arms propped on the back of the booth and hands dangling against the cushions, one behind Lulu and one behind Tidus, a jovial gleam in his eye. At Lulu, hands folded beneath her chin and her smile prim, sitting close to her boyfriend with her fur-collared jacket draped over her lap. At Sora, arranging the items on the tabletop so that it looked less like a restaurant table and more like _just _a table. Sora with his slate- and periwinkle-striped shirt, his navy-blue belt peeking out now and then as he moved, meticulous and determined that everything be perfect before he sat down, and as he straightened up, satisfied, he caught Riku's gaze and locked onto it for a moment. All the blue of his shirt made the color of his eyes pop, and they electrified Riku's nervous system, caused his spine to prickle with meek shivers that didn't last beyond an inch or two of flesh, lingered above his lower back.

Sora smiled at him, hands propped on his hips now that he'd accomplished a satisfactory arrangement of everything on the table. "Wow, Riku, I think this is the first time you've never had anything to say."

Riku shrugged, slumped further against the cushions of the booth and smiled sheepishly as Tidus and Wakka agreed whole-heartedly, followed by Kairi's mutual support of the verdict. "Whatever," he said. "I don't know what to say, so what?"

Sora grinned, absolutely pleased, and as he scooted onto the seat beside the silver-haired boy, the waiter came for their orders.

* * *

They got kicked out of the mall for the night because they had gotten too out-of-control in the courtyard outside the main doors--rowdy enough that, after people complained that they were too loud and after Tidus's shoes had been tossed in the fountains, the security guards banned them from the premises for the rest of the evening. It wasn't a problem, though, but a simple detour; it was five-thirty by the time they left and the mall closed at six on Sundays, so the unanimous decision was to drop by the nearest park and have fun.

Sora had been beyond delighted at this plan, but tried to stifle his excitement. Riku noticed. It made him smile.

The closest park was connected to the picnic grounds and the baseball fields a few blocks from the mall, and by the time they reached it--seven of them crammed into Wakka's Mustang, the redhead driving and Lulu in the passenger seat, Yuna on Tidus's lap, Kairi in the middle, and Sora sitting half on Kairi's leg and half on Riku's leg--it was past the burning portion of twilight and the sky was fading out to gray-blue, nearing dark.

They had obstacle course races across the playground. They had balance contests on the seesaws, jumping on one end while someone stood on the other. They had who-can-walk-in-a-straight-line-after-Wakka-spins-you-on-the-merry-go-round contests. And after an hour, the streetlights had come on and it was almost fully dark.

Riku could see his breath, sitting beside Sora and staring up at the sky. At some point, they had all gravitated to other areas--he and Sora to the swings; Kairi, Yuna, and Tidus to the tire swing where the blond boy was spinning them around and they were squealing and holding on for dear life; Lulu and Wakka to the monkey bars where they talked while she had a cigarette and he crossed back and forth, having to hold his legs up because he was too tall for the playground equipment.

Sora lay with his chest in the flimsy swing seat, arms crossed and chin propped in them and his toes stuck into the woodchips, knees dangling above the ground while he drifted from side to side. Riku sat to his left, arms hooked on the chains of the swing and fingers laced limply in his lap, rocking to and fro in his own rhythm.

"I can't believe we got kicked out of the mall," Riku mumbled, a dry smile curling at the corner of his mouth.

"I know." Sora snickered, propelling himself forward gently, swinging in and out of his crouched position. "I can't believe it either. Your friends are so fun."

Riku tossed hair out of his eyes and examined the toes of his Converse, pressing his lips together. His friends. Fun. They were definitely something, at least. "...Yeah. They are."

"Did you have a good time?"

Riku glimpsed over, examining Sora through his lashes. His skin was pale in the artificial light, his hair dancing in and out of his eyes as he rocked back and forth. He looked placid, lashes lowered and a calm smile playing across his lips. Sensing Riku's stare--that, or searching for justification of the hush--his gaze flickered to the side, his head tipped to the right, and he peered at Riku with the same tranquility gracing his features. His brows rose, silently repeating the question.

"Yeah," Riku said again, on a sigh. "I did. Thank--"

"You don't have to thank me."

"...Mm." The silver-haired boy kicked at some woodchips, watched them spray out from the assailing rubber toe of his shoe and scatter elsewhere a few inches away. "I don't have to, but I want to."

Sora waited, but Riku said nothing; he laughed, pushing himself to swing a little faster. "You want to, but you didn't!"

Riku smirked softly, kicking more woodchips. "I figured I didn't _have_ to."

Sora sputtered, words and laughter racing to get out of his mouth and colliding with each other upon finding the exit. "You said 'I don't have to, but I want to', so--"

"No, I meant--I figured I didn't have to _say_ it. That you would _feel_ it. Telepathically. Like your soul-mate is _supposed_ to be able to."

"Oh, I'm your soul-mate, am I?"

"Apparently not, because you didn't hear my telepathic thank-you."

Sora scoffed, shook his head, and continued to swing back and forth, his fingers drumming idly on his elbows. "You're...ugh. I don't know. Ridiculous."

"Charming, hilarious, quick-witted... You could have picked any of those and more, and you picked 'ridiculous'. Well, I'm flattered."

The brunet swerved to the side and stuck his hand in Riku's face, signaling the end of the conversation. Riku grunted, leaning away from the palm shoved his way, rolling his eyes. Gravity brought Sora swinging to the right again, then penduluming back to Riku; he stood on his toes and craned over, giving the older boy a peck on whatever surface of skin he happened to reach. The kiss landed on Riku's jaw and he nearly jumped, having not expected it.

Sora straightened out the path of his swing, grinning to himself. That cherubic, tongue-between-the-teeth impish smile, infinitely pleased with himself. Riku leaned over and nudged him with a fist, smiling absently. "You're just as ridiculous," he accused.

"I guess we're perfect for each other."

"Sure."

"So...don't go anywhere."

Riku blinked, his absent swinging slowly coming to a stop as he watched Sora amble back and forth. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't go anywhere," Sora repeated, avoiding eye contact. "I can't...lose you."

The silver-haired boy reached over and grasped the chain of Sora's swing to bring him to a stop, brow knotted and a skeptical frown tugging at his mouth. "Hunh?"

Sora didn't fight the sudden halt of his swing; he stared at the woodchips below him and was silent, head bowed and face hidden from Riku's view. They stayed like that for a long moment, until he finally spoke again.

"We're not exactly normal," Sora explained. "I don't know if you've realized it or not, but we're both boys."

Riku refused to let go of the swing. He scowled. "Is that sarcasm?"

"It's supposed to be. But still, it's a fact, too. And that means we're not exactly the norm. Homosexuality is very common in adolescent boys, even more so than realized, but it's usually just some kind of experimentation. At least, that's what statistics say."

Riku stared, blinked a few times, but didn't take his gaze off Sora. He was getting nervous; he didn't like the way this was sounding, and yet he couldn't help but completely doubt that it was headed where it _could_ be headed. He only hoped that Sora was brooding about something, not building up for something else.

Sora licked his lips, paused uncomfortably, and went on. "Aside from that, we both come from really fucked-up families. Our standards and our ethics and our objectives could be affected by our upbringings and surroundings, which could support the fact that our homosexuality isn't just experimentation, but a reaction to our experiences. According to statistics."

Riku frowned deeply, gaze flickering up and down Sora's body. Part of him wished he could see Sora's face; the other part didn't for fear of the expression skewing the features there. He could just imagine how his eyes would be, shattered like ice or glass, and with an appropriate amount of pain in them. Riku thought then that statistics could suck it, because if that explanation was claiming he was gay because his mom was a spineless blow-up doll come to life and his dad was an ignorant drunk, then many other teens should have been following the way of the textbook data and hooking up with the same sex. But he didn't say anything, because he wanted to know what Sora was getting at sounding all educational like that.

"We're also not normal...because of what happened with my dad. _I'm_ not normal because of it, and because I had a personality disorder as a result. And...I mean... How could I ever be in a normal relationship after that? All the statistics on child victims of molestation and rape... They usually don't grow up to be normal. They're either gay, or abstinent, or violent, or bed-wetters, or overly sexual, or horrified of passing that line with someone, or they go the route of becoming a psychological wreck, or all of that or a number of other things... Did you know that other statistics say that if one partner doesn't want to have sex, the other partner will eventually get fed up and leave them?" Sora shifted and the chains of his swing clinked together. "We're not normal, Riku. I'm not normal. Our relationship isn't normal."

"So you're saying," Riku gripped the chain in his hand tighter, leaning further towards him as his frown deepened into a sharper scowl, "that according to statistics, we're nothing but a product of your rape and my floundering experimentation?"

"_No_. That's _not_ what I'm saying. I'm saying I don't _want_ to be just the statistics--"

"Sora, what do the statistics say about two teens _not_ being statistical and actually being in love and staying together for the rest of their lives?"

"That's usually not what happens. Statistically, this is all a phase. Kids grow out of it. They--" Sora stopped talking, very well froze with his mouth still open. He whipped his face around and stared at Riku, and Riku had been right--his eyes were like shards of ice, poignant and sharp. But they softened as he stared at the silver-haired boy, dumbstruck.

"Yeah," Riku grumbled, letting go of the swing's chain. It clinked loudly in response, the swing it was attached to swerving from side to side after being released from his grip. "I meant it."

Sora continued to gawk, brow slowly drawing into a knot.

"Oh." Riku nodded, folding his hands in his lap again. "And yeah, I get it. You're trying to explain to me that you don't want to be the norm, that you don't want to lose me. So basically, you're telling me the same thing that I just said, but in different words. You don't want to be a statistic, and neither do I--and guess what? We're not. At least, I hope we're not. I hope we won't _become_ a statistic."

"Y...yeah..." Sora licked his lips again, tried to regain his composure; he stood and stared at the swing he'd been draped upon, then sat down on it again and mimicked Riku's slouch. "I agree."

Across the park, Tidus jerked himself away from the tire swing too hard and ended up tumbling backwards, woodchips spraying up from under him as he landed. Kairi laughed and Yuna yelped, clinging to the tire swing's chains as their ride came to a whiplash-inducing halt. The brunette girl hopped off the tire and ran to her boyfriend's aid, although no-one was hurt and even Tidus was laughing at his lack of grace.

At the swings, Sora drifted back and forth, quiet. Riku sat still, arms crossed and elbows propped on his knees; he stared down at his feet and the woodchips beneath them, not entirely sure that he should break the silence between them and not entirely sure he knew_ how_ to break it, anyway. The hush wasn't as uncomfortable as the tension had been when Sora had been talking, but it was still unsettling.

Tidus had gotten back up and spun the girls on the tire swing two more times before Riku ventured to speak. The silver-haired boy unfolded his arms, hands dangling between his knees, and he cleared his throat before gritting out, "I really did mean it."

"I know you did." Sora sounded less coarse than before, more at ease with their conversation, but his voice was still strained in uncertainty.

"I'm not going anywhere." Riku kicked absently at the woodchips again, with less passion this time. "Where the hell would I go?"

Sora chuckled curtly. "I don't know. Fred Meyer?"

"If you're saying that I'd go the way of my dad, you obviously don't trust me very well."

"No--I do--" Sora looked to Riku quickly. "I do. I'm just teasing--"

"Calm down, I know you trust me." Riku gave a meek laugh, began to swing back and forth idly. "What were you getting at? With all that 'statistics say this, statistics say that' junk?"

Sora hesitated--he very well balked--but then the confession came out in a long, rushed breath. "I don't want you to leave me because I'm not normal."

"What's not normal about you?" Riku scoffed, a crooked smile spread on his face. He swung a little further, watching Sora through the hair dusting across his eyes. "You're absolutely perfect. You've got a perfect face, perfect baby-blues, a perfect laugh--"

"Riku, just because you think I'm perfect, doesn't mean I'm normal." Sora sounded terse, a scowl curling across his features. He cut a glance at Riku through his lashes, cocking a brow. "And a barrage of compliments from you is a little...not _you_, isn't it?" He laughed suddenly, contradicting the sharpness of his gaze.

Riku blinked, a little dubious. He frowned, pushing hair out of his eyes. "Well, what are you talking about, then?"

Sora pushed forward and swung at a faster pace, seeming to loosen up a bit. Riku was vaguely reminded of a night almost three months ago, of the swings at Creek Street's park, of Sora claiming that when he was swinging, he left everything that troubled him on the ground and concentrated on transcending it all.

"Sex," Sora peeped, staring at Riku as innocuously as ever. "I'm talking about sex."

Riku stopped swinging, blinking a few times and wondering if he'd heard Sora wrong. But, no, the look on Sora's face was obvious enough. He was talking about--

"Sex," Riku reiterated, brows rising. "You're talking about _sex_?"

"Yeah. You get it now? All the stuff about statistics?" Sora nodded as if the topic were absolutely commonplace, turned his gaze up to the sky as he continued to quicken his speed, the chains of his swing creaking. "Sex. What if I'm afraid to have _actual_ sex with you?"

Riku's stomach knotted and his skin prickled with chills; his lips were parted like he wanted to say something, but he didn't have anything _to_ say. He was both thrilled and shocked by what Sora had said, and he wasn't sure what to do or say in response. Eventually, he realized he had a question in return, and he licked his dry lips and cleared his throat once more.

"...You wanna have _actual_ sex with me?"

Sora grunted, clucked his tongue in a very Kairi-like fashion, and just swung for a moment. Climbed higher towards the star-punctured sky, the wind he created making Riku's hair blow in and out of his face. "Well," he finally said, "I think that to have sex, you have to really love someone."

Riku thought about Mr. Kaimana. He thought, _Well, he raped you, and _that_ sex wasn't very loving_. But then he realized that Sora didn't consider that to have been _actual_ sex. It had been nothing close to the act of love-making, which was why he sounded so strongly supportive of his theory--that to have sex, the involvement of real love was required.

Then another hidden fact reared its head in the back of Riku's mind and he smiled, almost chuckled but didn't. "I think we're avoiding the real idea here."

"You think so?" Sora's heels dug into the woodchips and he slowed down until he was merely drifting beside the silver-haired boy, peering at him sideways. "Then what is it?"

"You love me," Riku murmured, grinning at the brunet. "You do. Admit it."

If it hadn't been dark, Sora would have been embarrassed by the obvious blush he could just _feel_ spreading across his face. But as it was, it was evening and the only light was from the streetlamps and moonlight and the faint twinkling of the city beyond the park foliage. And Sora couldn't help but smile, sheepish and abashed and lop-sided. Couldn't help but feel nervous and awkward and sick, like there were so many cliché butterflies in his stomach that they were going to burst out at any second. Because it was true, he knew it was true, and peering at Riku who was smiling back at him and looking so incredible in the meager light...

"I do," Sora whispered.

"You do what?"

"I love you."

Riku's grin intensified, slitting his sea-green eyes into crescents lined by the dark of his lashes. "No way."

"Way," Sora insisted softly, catching all of Riku's attempts at nonchalance. He was too cute. Always trying to come across that nothing affected him--and yet even if he didn't sound serious, Sora could tell he had just as many ridiculously typical butterflies fluttering in his gut. "And you love me, too. I know you do. You can't hide it."

"Whatever."

"Say it, Riku."

"It."

Sora swerved to the left and kicked the other boy in the shin, giving him a sharp glance. "Don't ruin the moment, stupid."

Riku hissed, grunted, rubbed at his assaulted leg and glared at Sora. "_I'm_ not ruining the moment here! Fuck--"

"Riku..."

Riku blinked, slowly falling motionless and peering at the boy beside him in silence. Sora regarded him with patience, imploring eyes and a tilted head. Riku scoffed below his breath, smiled halfway and swerved to the right, grasped the farthest chain of Sora's swing and jerked him to the left. Sora jumped, eyes widening, and his knees bumped into Riku's as the silver-haired boy craned forward, free hand brushing up to rest upon Sora's cheek. Sora anticipated a kiss--but instead, Riku simply touched their foreheads together and closed his eyes, leaning against him.

"I feel weird."

Sora shrugged. "So do I."

"No... I feel weird...like...I can't say it. I want to. It's not coming out."

Sora waited, staring at Riku even though his green eyes were still shut. His brows were furrowed and his face looked pinched, drawn into a frown--but Sora waited. As the silence stretched on, the anxiety in his chest spoiled away from exhilarating to discomfiting, and he didn't know why he was suddenly feeling so apprehensive. And then Riku spoke.

"Roxas and I...were together, too. Kairi set it up that way." His eyes fluttered open and poignant sea-green met clouded cobalt blue. Sora didn't say anything, so Riku let out a breath and went on. "So that it would be easier. I didn't like it at first, but..."

"I know."

Riku started. Almost drew away but simply blinked, tilted his head to the side, peered at Sora in perplexity. "...You know?"

"Yeah. I know. It's not cheating."

Riku actually drew away this time, just a few inches. Both stunned and ashamed and confused, he was struck dumb. It took him a moment to comprehend that Sora knew because he was also Roxas, because Roxas was Sora and they weren't two separate people deep down in the core of their shared consciousness--their _singular_ consciousness now--but he was still surprised, and somewhat guilty, and suddenly awash in a very foreign feeling, akin to gratitude. He cupped Sora's face in his hands and leaned back in, forehead-to-forehead once more.

"I love you," Riku said. "More than anything."

Sora smiled, tipping his face forward and landing a small kiss on Riku's lips. "Happy birthday," he whispered.

* * *

**A/N: I apologize in advance if this chapter feels as much of **_**finality**_** as the last one did. When I wrote the last three, it was like...one big chapter, so I split it up. That could explain it. **

**One more chapter left. 8D**


	20. The Worst Day Ever

_**Candy Boy**_

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts and the rest of the franchise © Disney and Square Enix; everything else © their rightful and original owners. **

**Ratings/Warnings: M--profanity, adult themes; AU**

* * *

_Chapter Twenty_

* * *

Around eight, Riku's birthday party ended and he was nearly suffocated in Tidus and Wakka's embrace--a monstrous double bear-hug, noogie, and back-slap that the silver-haired boy hadn't experienced in a long time.

By nine, he'd given everyone hugs good-night, and he and Sora were back at the Kaimana house; he phoned home to let his parents know he was staying the night at a friend's. His mom picked up again, which was once more unusual, but Riku wasn't going to question good luck. Mrs. Kaimana, Sora said, was not going to be off work until ten, which gave them around an hour alone together.

In which, they found themselves in Sora's room, on the bed, lacking both shoes and self-restraint, sipping breath from each other's mouths as they kissed for the first time that day. Not a quick, secret peck here and there when they'd been adequately out-of-view, but supple, hungry, properly amorous macking. Warm and wet, hot sighs and pliant lips, little nips here and there and a shy tongue pressing to be granted entrance. Sora's hands traveled Riku's back, beneath his shirt, while Riku's mouth was busy in the crook of the brunet's neck, trailing soft kisses and tentative brushes of tongue. Sora's fingers made their way down Riku's arm, to where the leather wristband hung limply on his thin wrist. He fumbled with it absently, tipping his head to allow Riku more skin to nibble.

"Riku... If we ever did have sex, would I be the one getting it?"

Riku paused, lips dusting Sora's neck. Was this a trick question? No, couldn't be; Sora wouldn't make something like that into a trick question.

"I probably would be." Sora snickered and his body rolled with the movement, causing Riku to move with him. Sora continued to fiddle with the leather wristband. "You'd be uncomfortable, hunh?"

"No..." Riku frowned, lifting up and hovering over Sora, hands pressed to the bed to either side of his head. Sora blinked up at him, raising his brows.

"No?"

"No. I wouldn't be." Riku laughed, coyly. "But you'd have to, well, you know...teach me how to do it."

Sora pondered this for a moment, looked distant for a few seconds, then wrapped his arms around Riku's shoulders and brought him back down atop him. His body arched as Riku's nose buried back into his neck, fingers spreading absently on the silver-haired boy's shoulders. "Teach you how to do it?"

"Mm-hnm."

Sora shifted his ankle, nudging Riku's legs further apart so he could roll his hips upward with less of a struggle. Hidden against Riku's shoulder, a sly smile pulled at his mouth and sultry mischief shadowed his eyes. "Well, Riku, you'd have to be...really slick."

Riku grunted, taken slightly aback by Sora's abrupt shift in attitude, from soft to sensual in the blink of an eye. He remembered a few months ago, on Sora's birthday, when he'd directed Riku in what to do as far as the proper mechanics of having sex. Riku wondered briefly if Sora had been required to _learn_ all the mechanics of sex, as a kind of circumspection after what happened with his dad.

Riku tensed, attention drawn back to the matter at hand as Sora's body bucked up into his, and after a moment of hesitating, he complied and pressed his own hips down in response. "...Uh hunh."

Sora's thighs inched apart and he dug his socked heels into the mattress, thrusting up again. His arms tightened and he cocked his head back, gasping into Riku's ear. He felt as though he was winning a race, but they weren't playing a game here; this was fun, yes, but it was definitely serious, too. "And when you're slick enough...you'd go in me."

Riku choked on a breath at the very thought of doing so, grit his teeth against a groan, and took a harsh breath against Sora's sweet skin as he ground down into him. "Unh..."

"Ah, Riku--" Sora's fingers curled into the black cotton of Riku's shirt and he rocked his body harder, sharper. The devilish smirk at the corners of his mouth faded away into a delighted grimace. "And then--"

Riku ducked his nose down into Sora's ear and interrupted him, began to whisper, began to tell him all the things he'd do and how he'd do them and how much he'd like it. Sora moaned and bucked and clung to the older boy, and Riku thrust down and grunted and murmured over and over against the curves of Sora's ear, and after a short and lustful moment, they were both enrapt in their chimerical love-making session, their shared daydreaming of vocal approval, undulating bodies, and satisfied hard-ons--one that was beginning to come to life in Sora's bedroom, if Sora continued to move like that, if the silver-haired boy continued to grind like that, if they _both_ continued to gasp like that--

Sora's bedroom door opened, the obligatory knock sounding as it swung ajar, and within seconds, Riku was on the floor and holding his gut where Sora had accidentally kicked him in their joint effort to scramble into as innocent a position as possible.

Mrs. Kaimana stood in the hallway, fingertips dusting the doorknob of her son's door. Blinking, she squinted into the dark of his room, then swept her hand up the wall and flipped his light on. Sora sat on the edge of his bed, slumped forward with his arms crossed on his thighs. His toe was tapping against the bed frame, and she vaguely noted to herself that that was something of a habit when he was nervous. What she noticed beyond that, though, was his boyfriend, standing at the opposite side of the bed with his hands shoved in his pockets and looking as calm and collected as Sora looked guileless. Not wanting to fathom what she had just interrupted, the young woman sighed heavily and raised her free hand to her temple, brushing hair out of her face.

"I knew you wouldn't be asleep at ten," she murmured, directed at Sora but spoken to everyone in the room.

Sora shrugged quickly, shook his head even faster, then gave his mom a smile and hopped off the bed. "Nah, we're just hanging out. It's his birthday today."

"Oh, honey, happy birthday." She sounded tired; her smile seemed even more exhausted. Riku wondered if she was worn-out from work or just the simple stress of what she found upon returning home. "It's late. Are your parents okay with this? And on your birthday...?"

Riku shrugged in turn. "Well, see, you called my dad about me and Sora back when you talked to me and Roxas, and after that, he hasn't really cared where I am. So I'm fine."

"_Riku_," Sora hissed, cutting him a harsh glance.

"What are you talking about?" Mrs. Kaimana's words were more wary than defensive. "What do you mean?"

Riku shifted, frowning. Exchanged eye contact with Sora and frowned further. He felt bad now, for sounding so sharp. People were proven to sometimes forget to evaluate the consequences of their actions, especially the rash ones. _But_, he thought. _Still. She fucking tattled on me_. "Uh... Well... You called and told my dad that I was Sora's boyfriend, and he didn't particularly like it. For a while he was pretty nasty about it, but now he doesn't care either way. Like, he _really_ doesn't care. If I never came home again, he'd be perfectly fine."

Sora's mother held her head, leaning against the frame of the doorway; she stayed like that for a lengthy couple of moments. "I hope you know I didn't mean for that to happen. I assumed he knew--"

"Not everyone is as lucky as Sora."

Both Sora and his mom shot startled glances at the silver-haired boy. The woman didn't say a word; Sora, on the other hand, spat out, "What does _that _mean, Riku?"

"Your mom is understanding." Riku shrugged, frowning further. More genuinely this time. "She knows you, she loves you, she accepts you. You're so open with her about everything, so when the time came that she found out about me, she tried her best to understand it. But I'm not really open with anyone in my house. I don't talk to them. They don't really talk to me. So I didn't tell anyone about you, because I knew no-one would understand me."

It was quiet. Tense, volatile. Mrs. Kaimana said, distant and nearly emotionless, "I apologize for causing anything of a hassle for you. I hope you know I didn't...anticipate a reaction like that."

Riku glanced at Sora for permission to respond, but Sora was staring at his feet. He sighed. "Maybe...you should have asked me before calling my dad."

"Are you going to stay the night, honey?" Yuuko's mouth pinched in a thin line and she drummed her fingers on the doorframe, her French-tipped nails tapping against the wood. She hadn't avoided responding to his suggestion out of spite; she just didn't quite know how to handle a sixteen-year-old being right while she stood in the obvious wrong, especially a sixteen-year-old that was not her own flesh and blood.

"...If it's alright."

"Sure thing. Not a problem with me." Her blue eyes flickered over to her son, gave him a once-over, and then she straightened up and began to back into the hallway. "I'm across the hall if you need anything."

The room was silent as the door clicked shut, the light on and three feet of space between the two boys. They were quiet all through the sounds of Mrs. Kaimana retreating to her room, turning her television on, trundling down the hall to the bathroom. When the shower started running, Sora uttered a shy little chortle. Riku glanced at him, raised his brows in question as to where Sora found the humor in all this.

"She knows we're up to something, Riku."

"Um, are we...still up to something, or what?"

"Were you telling the truth?"

"About my parents? Yeah. About you being lucky? Yeah."

Sora smiled softly, moved across the room to the door. "Do you want to watch TV?"

Riku nodded, feeling as though a guilty weight were pressing between his shoulder blades. Anxious but not encumbering. It would be gone within a few hours of relaxing, and would only resurface the next time he saw Mrs. Kaimana. "So I take that as we're not up to something anymore."

"Maybe, maybe not."

"We can just watch TV if you want. As long as you make sure your mom knows I'm not mad at her."

* * *

Riku's birthday officially ended on the Kaimana couch at two o'clock in the morning. There was no sex, but there was definitely an abundance in good times.

* * *

Valentine's Day was nothing special. Sora claimed it was only a nationwide marketing campaign, that if you really needed a holiday to let someone know you loved them, there was something wrong with your relationship, that it was a waste of money and a waste of effort--so they didn't do anything special, but instead helped Kairi count how many store-bought and home-made paper hearts she received from numerous secret _and _not-so-secret admirers.

Even though Valentine's Day was nothing special, Riku found it the perfect opportunity to openly display his affection for Sora. So while Kairi dissected her mountain of valentines, Riku kept his arms around Sora. In the student body's eye. In flawless view from his old lunch table. On purpose. He knew his old friends were looking. He knew other kids he didn't even _know_ were looking. He even thought he heard his name mentioned a few times from a couple yards away, where his old crew still found him a hot enough topic to discuss.

Tidus was the first to move to the table with them, accompanied by Yuna--who had become quite the bridge between the segregated groups of friends. Wakka followed, Lulu in the lead, the brains to the brawn as always.

"They called you a fag," Tidus mumbled, sounding rather disappointed that he even had to bear the bad news in the first place.

Sora glanced at Riku, who had bristled at the announcement. But then he shrugged, tightened his arm around Sora's waist and propped his cheek in his palm. "Who cares," he edged out, but it was obvious he wasn't pleased.

It went unspoken that the four who had switched tables were not going to switch back, and out of nowhere, a realization bloomed in Riku's mind. He remembered lying in bed with his mom sitting beside him, running her thin fingers through his hair as he drifted off to sleep. Remembered her voice as he began to fall away into dreamland, tickling his ear just off the edge of consciousness--something about a little boy and a reflection in a pond, the reflection talking, saying, _You don't know anything yet--but you'll learn. You'll learn that you have to look for the good things. They may be hard to find and you might want to give up, but there's always something good._

Riku thought then that the people sitting around him were pretty good, and after that he felt kind of stupid for never noticing these things before.

* * *

The worst day ever was a week and a half later, on Friday.

Riku had a condom stuck in his wallet, the wallet in his back pocket, and a chain keeping his wallet attached to his jeans. He and Sora had come to the conclusion that Friday night, they were finally going to _do_ it, so their meeting in the hallways on Friday morning was tentative and flustered, all anxious grins and glances of reassurance.

Sora was not there during lunch.

Riku checked in the office, in case Sora was in the nurse's office. She told him he had been picked up during second period.

Riku was _very_ worried. Almost scared, almost panicked, but able to keep himself struggling through the afternoon at a level of _very worried_.

He went home first, planning to call the Kaimana house and see what was going on. But when he walked through his front door, Riku ran into something of a roadblock. It was like a dream, where everything appeared real but didn't feel that way. Where reality buckled at the edges, swayed over the line and back again, where everything was happening somewhere far below him and he was detached from actuality, floating along on a string and watching from an unaffectable distance, far away.

When he opened the door and dropped his bag to the floor, it took him a moment to realize what was going on around him. Riku was halfway out of his coat before he acknowledged the intensity with which his father was yelling--before he acknowledged the lunacy with which his mother was yelling _back_. The boy stood in the threshold, his hand still on the handle of the main door and chilly February air licking at his skin through the screen door as he watched his parents' fight play out before him like a scene in a movie.

His dad had his hands in the air, his work uniform on sloppily enough that it was beginning to fall off. He was pacing through the kitchen, dropping every derogative name he could, displaying facts and screeching questions as though they were going to stop anything. At the sink was his fragile wife, but she didn't look like a listless, broken woman anymore. In fact, Riku was so startled that he wondered briefly if a neighbor had intruded their home. But no, that was his mother--that was his mom, shoulders squared and head held high and her fingers clasped about numerous necks of beer bottles. Riku noticed first that she was a lot bigger than she appeared to be, curled up in her chair reading books, and then he finally noticed that she was pouring out all of his dad's Bud. Just dumping it all down the sink.

"You're fucking crazy," his dad accused, storming towards the hallway but reconsidering and shooting back into the kitchen. "You're a psycho, lazy old hag and you're wasting our money! Pouring our money down the sink! You'd better stop or--"

"Or what?" His mother laughed--nearly cackled, but it was too sane to be a cackle--and pushed the rest of the bottles into the sink, not taking the time to open them and pour out the contents herself but instead just smashing them in the basin of the sink. "Or what, Ichiro? Or _else_?"

Riku knew that they hadn't noticed him, and he didn't want them to at that point. Not after hearing the numerous bottles shatter in the sink. Instead, he backed out of the house, sprinted across the lawn, and wished he had a car yet again as he hurried to the bus stop. He'd just go to Sora's house, and if he wasn't there... Well, Riku didn't know what he would do. But at this point, Sora having gone missing from school and the lowbrow apparatus of his household breaking down was far too much to grasp all at once. So he didn't. He took a deep breath and managed to stay impassive about it.

If Sora wasn't at his house, he would really start to panic, but until he had reason to, Riku was not going to lose his composure. He was going to go to Fallridge and find his boyfriend.

* * *

He saw Sora at the swings as the bus passed Creek Street park, and yanked on the passenger wire for a good fifteen seconds before the bus finally halted at the appropriate stop, the one it had been headed to anyway. Riku hopped the stairs and nearly ran as soon as his feet hit the sidewalk, but he managed to keep his pace at a very fast walk, hands in his pockets.

Sora was indeed sitting on a swing, slumped with his head hung as he slowly swayed back and forth. Riku gripped the chain of his swing as he approached, trying to catch his breath.

"Why'd you go home early?" he demanded, sea-green eyes traveling the other boy up and down with utmost and sharp concern. Sora had his cream-colored coat buttoned all the way up, his hand in his pocket with something box-shaped, and Riku knew what it was even before Sora pulled his hand out and conveyed a little red Swedish Fish to his mouth.

"My grandparents picked me up," Sora replied, absolutely lifeless.

Riku dropped to a crouch beside him, trying to look him in the eyes. Sora focused on his red Converse, face blank but for his knotted brow and murky blue stare. It wasn't the first time he had gone into a state of indifference, and through experience, Riku knew that such episodes meant something bad. Somewhere inside, Riku wanted to be impatient, but he wouldn't allow himself to be that way. Instead, he hissed, "Why did they pick you up?"

Sora sighed, his breath becoming a cloud as it exited his mouth and joined the rest of the crisp winter air. "I'm moving in with them."

Time stopped, if only for a moment. Riku blinked, felt his stomach drop, sensed his heart begin to hammer his chest; he craned forward, perplexed. "You're..._moving_?"

Sora rummaged for another Swedish Fish, spoke around it as he chewed. "I got called to the office during second hour and my grandparents were there. Apparently, my dad has gotten out of jail."

Riku scoffed, a sharp sound in the back of his throat. Ice overtook his face and he stuttered, "What? No, that's bullshit. That's _wrong_. How on earth would they let him out if..." He grit his teeth, hands fisting instinctively. "If I see him--"

"Just listen. In the district Traverse City is in, incestual rape is tried in family courts and my dad only got sentenced to five years. But you know how it goes. Besides losing five years of his life, now he's registered as a sex offender, owes my mom compensation for therapy and hospital bills and, oh, he'll never be allowed to work with children. Nobody will ever give him the benefit of the doubt. Except my mom." Sora kicked at the ground, scowled at it, then promptly began to choke up. "My mom is going to give him a second chance, Riku. They're not officially divorced, you know. Just separated. My mom put a restraining order on him back when everything happened, but only for _me_, not for _her_. So, naturally, she's concerned about my safety, which means I'm moving in with my grandparents in Twilighttown. Riku, that's _hours away!_"

Riku shifted, plopping down because he suddenly didn't have the strength to crouch. "You're lying."

"Nope." Sora gave a terse laugh, although the tears in his eyes were obvious. Finally, he lifted his head, only to grip the chains with both hands and bark out, "I love my mom to death but she's so fucking _stupid_! How does me moving make me any more _safe_?! What does she expect, that everything's going to be wonderful again? That at some point we're going to be one big happy family again? She's _stupid_, she's _so STUPID_!"

Riku simply sat at his feet, gawking down at his lap where his hands lay limp along his thighs. He was in shock. Blindsided. His chest felt tight, and he felt like kicking something but first of all, he didn't know what, and second of all, he couldn't get up. Where was the thunder? Wasn't God supposed to be laughing at him right now?

Sora gasped sharply, choked on a stifled sob that wrenched from his chest, arms instinctively winding about his own torso as he curled forward. "I don't get it, Riku. I don't get it."

"I don't get it either," Riku managed. He kind of felt sick to his stomach all of a sudden, not at all optimistic, but he had to say something comforting. Something Sora-like. Something Sora would understand, something he'd agree with. He swallowed the rapidly rising fury at everything Sora had just told him and husked, "Hey, you know. Sometimes...you have to go through the bad to get to the good."

"Yeah, well, every time something _good_ happens to me, it's ruined. I thought everything would be okay now that I'm better--now that I've got you, too--but it's not. It's all a big fucking sham."

Riku reached up, placed a hand on Sora's lower back. Sora's body shook as he tried to keep himself from crying, but only ended up worsening his distress.

"What if it comes back, Riku? What if I'm so upset there that my stupid disorder comes back and no-one there can help me pull out of it? I'll have nowhere to go. I won't be able to see you. I barely even _know_ these grandparents, Riku! I didn't know they lived here! The last time I saw them, it was a family reunion on the islands and I was, like, eight!"

Riku climbed to his feet, brushed woodchips off his pants and wrapped his arms around the brunet. Let him finish crying before he dared to speak, so that Sora would be sure to hear him. He said, "Candy boy," and Sora hitched a breath, held it, and sniffled loudly.

"What?"

"When do you leave?"

"_Tonight_. My grandparents are taking me tonight. Since they picked me up, I've spent all day packing up my fucking room."

"Okay, listen. Twilighttown is only a few hours away. I'm gonna get my license soon, and I'll get a job to save up for a car but until then I've got friends who can drive so it's fine. I'll come see you every other day. And we'll talk on the phone, _every _day. We can set something up on the weekends, like you come stay with me, or I'll go stay with you... Something like that." Riku's brows furrowed as Sora's fingers fisted on his jacket, pulling him closer. "We'll work something out. It'll be fine."

"I just don't understand," Sora groaned, talking into Riku's stomach. "I love her so much, she's such an amazing mom, I couldn't ask for more, but why is she doing this?"

"I don't know," Riku said, leaning down to whisper it against Sora's temple. "But everything's going to be okay."

"Yeah, sure. Whatever."

Riku pressed his hands to Sora's damp cheeks, forced him to tip his head back and meet his gaze. Sora's jaw was set in a firm frown, a bonafide Roxas expression that reminded Riku of everything they'd overcome so far--but when Sora's eyes met Riku's, they softened, and his lower lip began to quiver again.

Sora fumbled in his other pocket, pulled something out and clawed for Riku's left hand. Shoved something tiny, smooth, and cool in his palm and closed his fist around it, never once looking away.

"Do you promise me you'll do that, until we can figure something else out?" Sora smiled weakly, but his brows were still furrowed and it looked a bit forced. "Do you promise that you'll call me every day, come see me every time you can?"

"I promise," Riku whispered, otherwise still dumbstruck. "And, hell, you can get a job soon, too. And you'll be able to drive soon, and before you know it, we'll both be old enough to move out. You know?" He uncurled his fingers and glanced down at what Sora had shoved in his palm. The sight of it made his gut knot up. It was a little black ring, untarnished and blank. Sora held out his hand, showing Riku that he had a matching white ring.

Sora motioned for him to pay attention as he slid the white ring onto his left middle finger. Riku followed the example, donning the black ring on the same finger; upon finishing, he grasped Sora's hand and laced their fingers, stooped down and gave his knuckles a papery kiss.

"She's stupid," Sora grumbled, sounding distraught again. Riku stepped backwards, pulled Sora up off the swing and into a tight hug.

Riku waited with Sora for his grandparents to return with their pick-up truck, the two of them alone in the quiet townhome and trying to avoid discussing the stupidity of it all because it was so blatantly stupid it didn't need to be established as such anymore. When Sora's grandparents did arrive, Riku helped him shove all his things into the bed of the truck. They kissed, numerous times, each one inadequate until finally Sora really had to go. His little white ring gleamed in the pale sunlight as he waved out the window of the truck, fervently, not smiling but squinting through the distance growing between the truck's rear fender and the curb.

Riku took the bus home.

He didn't want to think anymore about it; the bottom line had already been set. _She's stupid_. He could hear Sora saying it over and over. _She's stupid. I love her, but she's stupid. I don't get it. She's so STUPID!_

On the bus, Riku was struck with the urge to stop by Kairi's house. He realized a few minutes later that he didn't know where she lived.

* * *

It was dinnertime, but he wasn't hungry.

He walked through the door and his dad, now that his wife was no longer an easy target, welcomed him with scathing comments and insults, sly remarks--something about necking with that girlfriend-oh-wait-sorry-I-mean-boyfriend of his, another something about why did he look so down, was he gonna run away again?

Riku went to Tidus's.

Tidus played video games, letting Riku lay on his bed with his face shoved in the blond's pillow. He listened as Riku talked, babbling about how stupid the world was and how he needed to get a car and a job and about how he had finally found something to live for. Tidus listened, a little perplexed by Riku's sudden openness, but he offered his advice in the proper areas and simply listened to the rest. When Riku's voice got thin and he stopped talking, Tidus abandoned his game and joined his friend on his bed, just sat by him while he kept his face shoved in the pillow and his shoulders trembled. Tidus wasn't sure if it was in rage or what, but he sat by him all the same.

* * *

_"If you don't want to make friends, then why did you sit here? Usually that's a big red flag that someone wants to be your friend. To me, at least."_

_"Whatever, candy boy."_

_"Let me give you my number, okay?"_

_"Sora? I'm Roxas. You should know that if we're going out."_

_"There has to be one hell of a reason I'm dating you."_

_"Sora, why do you eat Swedish Fish all the time?"_

_"I eat them when I'm nervous, I guess."_

_"Oh. So, I make you nervous."_

_"No. No, you... Well, yes, but it's a good kind. I mean, like, certain things make me scared-nervous, but you, ah... You... Oh, whatever!"_

_"I promise...that you can trust me."_

_"Riku?"_

_"Ah--yeah?"_

_"It's Roxas. I just... I... I'm not okay. Will you talk to me a little bit? Just for a while..."_

_"What if I jumped off? Right now?"_

_"You'll never be 'free', Roxas. You're part of Sora and you always will be."_

_"Not you, too, Riku--not you, too! They got you in on this, didn't they? They all think I'm crazy! They think I'm fucking psycho! I'm real. I don't know why they think I'm so sick in the head, that I don't even know who I am or what happens to me when I forget. I don't understand." _

_"You might not believe it, but I really love you."_

_"Nah, Roxas... I believe it."_

_"Hey, Riku, did you know I still have that Swedish Fish you made a promise on?"_

_"Don't go anywhere. I can't...lose you."_

* * *

"Hey, Riku, my man!"

Tidus grinned broadly, waving at the silver-haired waiter. Riku glanced at him through his lashes, cocked a brow, pushed the hair that had not been long enough for his ponytail out of his face and shifted from the kitchen threshold over to the service counter. The Bean, a little café on the corner of Oceana and 13th, was not very busy for a Tuesday evening--especially a Tuesday evening in April--and Tidus slumped on the counter with an impish smile. Yuna stood behind him, tucking hair behind her ear and looking around the café curiously.

"Let me guess," Riku sighed, propping both hands on the surface of the counter. "To repay you for all the hospitality you've graced me with in the last few months, you'd like me to get you some free food. Right?"

"No, no, no--"

"Then why are you bothering me while I work?"

"You just got your license and stuff, right?"

"Yeah, finally."

"Aaaand Wakka's going out of town this weekend, right?"

"He said he was."

"Which means you'll be out of a ride, right?"

Riku frowned, regarding Tidus suspiciously. "Right. Why?" He watched as Tidus's eyes flickered to his left hand, to the black ring, lingering there, then shooting back up to meet Riku's stare.

The blond's voice lowered and the goofy grin on his face faded into a very serious expression, big-eyed and solemn. "Look," he murmured, "you know my dad doesn't have a problem with you staying with us and all, he really doesn't. And I've been talking to him, you know, about your problem with your long-distance thing--"

"Uh..._what_?" Riku's stomach fell and he craned forward, mimicking Tidus's position and scowling sharply. "What did you tell him about that?"

Tidus shrugged, leaning in even further to ensure no-one else picked up on their conversation. "That your significant other moved away and you've been asking Wakka to drive you when he can because you're saving up for your own car."

"You said that? You said _significant other_?"

"Yes. Don't worry. And besides, even if my dad knew it was your_ boyfriend _you go and stay with on the weekends, he wouldn't mind. I think." Tidus grinned again, awkwardly, and continued with his proposal. "So anyway, my dad loves working on cars and stuff, and he found you a really good deal on a used one. _Cheap_, man. And he'll help you with all the complicated stuff, make sure it runs fine for you. He's gonna talk to you about it later, but I just wanted to let you know that you don't have to worry about telling Sora you can't get there this weekend. You'll have a ride, I promise."

Riku stared for a long moment of silence as what Tidus had said processed in his mind, and after it finally registered, he curled into a sheepish smile and straightened up, a little dumbstruck. "Seriously? Your dad found me a car?"

"Yup." Tidus beamed.

"I don't believe it."

"I know, but it's true. Now... Free food?"

Riku's smile faded into a firm frown and although his eyes still gleamed with gratitude, he pointed to the door. Tidus laughed. "Get out, you mooch. Before I throw you out."

"I'm going, I'm going!" Tidus waved his hands dismissively and stood up straight, grabbing for Yuna's hand. "I'll see you later, okay?"

"Hey..." Riku frowned, thinking for a moment. "Will you pick up a bag of Swedish Fish for me? I'll pay you back when I get home."

* * *

Sora. Almost seven months ago. Sitting across the lunch table and digging a pretzel out of a little bag, saying matter-of-factly, "If you don't want to make friends, then why did you sit here? Usually that's a big red flag that someone wants to be your friend. To me, at least."

Over dinner five months ago, when an innocuous kiss sent Sora reeling and brought Roxas into the picture. Five months ago when a simple white lie had become something so complex, something so intriguing.

Roxas, weeks and weeks ago. Sarcastic and confusing and more than Riku could handle. Roxas, hair tossed to the side and checkered-banded wrist, familiar blue eyes slit into little crescents with his wry smile.

The stupid Swedish Fish promise, and long after that Sora's birthday. The bathroom. Christmas. The clock tower.

The afternoons spent, the dinners made, the long and late-night phone calls--the red Converse, then the black Converse, but always the same feet.

* * *

_"I love you."_

_"No way."_

_"Way. And you love me, too. I know you do. You can't hide it."_

_"Whatever."_

_"Say it, Riku."_

_"It."_

_"Don't ruin the moment, stupid." _

_"I love you. More than anything."_

_You don't know anything yet--but you'll learn. You'll learn that you have to look for the good things. They may be hard to find and you might want to give up, but there's always something good._

Hey, you know. Sometimes you have to go through the bad to get to the good.

* * *

**End.**


End file.
